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Small Robot Company: green agri-tech farmbots

Building small robots to transform farming. Cut chemicals and CO2- save wildlife and feed the world.

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Small Robot Company: green agri-tech farmbots

Small Robot Company: green agri-tech farmbots

Small Robot Company: green agri-tech farmbots

Small Robot Company: green agri-tech farmbots

Small Robot Company: green agri-tech farmbots

Building small robots to transform farming. Cut chemicals and CO2- save wildlife and feed the world.

Building small robots to transform farming. Cut chemicals and CO2- save wildlife and feed the world.

Building small robots to transform farming. Cut chemicals and CO2- save wildlife and feed the world.

Building small robots to transform farming. Cut chemicals and CO2- save wildlife and feed the world.

Ben Scott-Robinson
Ben Scott-Robinson
Ben Scott-Robinson
Ben Scott-Robinson
1 Campaign |
Southampton, United Kingdom
$65,135 USD $65,135 USD by 235 backers
$62,469 USD by 219 backers on Jul 10, 2018
Overview
Get green agri-tech farmbots into the field. Our small robots Tom, Dick and Harry will cut chemicals and CO2 by up to 95%, saving wildlife. The Small Robot Company needs your backing to commercialise Harry, our digital planting robot. With your help on Indiegogo, and innovation award from the IET we've made an early prototype. But we need help. Together, with your support, we can radically change the way we farm today, saving bees, insects worms and fish. Back Harry: transform farming.

Back us to cut chemicals and CO2 to save wildlife

Small Robot Company is a British agri-tech start up. We want to revolutionise the way that technology is used to create food, reducing its cost on the environment. To do this, we are transforming farming with robots and artificial intelligence. 

Back our campaign, and we can reduce chemical usage and cultivation energy (and associated CO2 emissions) in arable farming by up to 95%

We need your help to commercialise our small precision farming robots, starting with our Harry robot. Thanks to help all the help from the crowd Indiegogo, we met our initial funding target and have now built an early prototype, which we launched at the extremely prestigious WIRED Live Innovation Festival. We now need your help to get Harry into the field.

Most farmers want to be better stewards of the environment. But the hard limitations of today's heavy machinery prevent them. These dictate current arable farming methods, in particular ploughing and blanket spraying, which are extremely harmful to the environment. Unfortunately, if you treat the whole field the same, overuse of chemicals is inevitable.

Our vision is to automate and digitise arable crop farming. Our innovative and lightweight robots will care for each plant in the crop on an individual basis. They will only feed and spray the plants that need it, giving them the perfect levels nutrients and support, with no waste.

And with improved yields and productivity, we can help feed the world by 2030.

Thanks to a prestigious Innovation Award from the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) we have developed an early prototype for our digital planting robot Harry, which we launched at WIRED Live in November 2018. We're now at Technology Readiness Level 4, which is fantastic progress, but we need your help to complete his journey and get a robust commercial model into the field.

Small Robots. Friends to farmers, and to worms. And hedgerows. And bees, insects and fish. And you.

Small. Is. Good.

 

So where have we got to?

  • 15 years of scientific research
  • Seed funding from UK farmers
  • Non-exec directors including Tom Hume, robotics expert at X (the research and development 'moonshot factory' founded by Google, formerly called Google [x])
  • Prototype Tom monitoring robot successfully built and tested (see him in this video here)
  • Prototype Harry digital planting robot successfully developed and built to Technology Readiness Level 4
  • All the core technology sorted for our farmbot family 

Professor Simon Blackmore, Head of Agricultural Robotics at Harper Adams University and the world’s leading expert on precision farming, did all the research we’re using. He’s also mentoring our company.

  • Launched in November 2017
  • Enthusiastic reception from the farming community and media
  • We are starting with the UK market, focusing on arable farming. Our robots can work in all types of arable farms - mainstream traditional and organic, large and small, all over the world
  • Paying customers for wheat crops already lined up for October 2018

Press coverage includes a stand out profile piece in the Daily Telegraph in May 2018, plus The Huffington Post, Lush Times, The Guardian, the BBC, The Scotsman, and The South China Morning Post. We've also seen extensive coverage in the farming press including Farmers Weekly, Crop Production Magazine, and Farming UK. And finally, we were picked as a top five UK agritech start up to watch by Techworld.

 

What do we need?

We have successfully raised £50,000 on Indiegogo to develop and build an early prototype for our small robot Harry. We built this over the summer, thanks to your help, and launched this in November 2018. 

Help us a little more, and we can get him into the field:

  • Develop Harry's digital planting punch-planting mechanism from TLR-4 to a robust commercial model
  • Accurately place seed individually in the ground at a uniform depth to within 2cm accuracy, creating a plant level map showing the location of each seed
  • Radically reduce soil run off and associated water pollution, by punch-planting rather than ploughing
  • Conduct field trials of the prototype robots
  • Deliver Harry for commercial trials in October 2019
  • Paying customers are already signed up, lined up and waiting

A heartfelt thanks

We're incredibly grateful to all of you who can back our campaign. While the warm and fuzzy feel-good glow of helping out is something in itself, we're keen to show our gratitude with the following rewards:

  • JOIN our exclusive FELLOWSHIP of the Small Robot
  • BE THE FIRST to buy Robot Beer and Robot Gin - and eventually, Robot Whisky
  • Build our prototype robot Pris - kit with complete kit and instructions
  • Inspire the next generation - our robot can visit your kids' school for a robotics workshop
  • MEET OUR ROBOTS - and help train our AI system
  • BE THE FUTURE: if you're a farmer, you can get our robots in your field
  • Digitally plant a secret Robot Valentine’s message to your partner
  • Be a PATRON of our Small Robot Foundation: foster the next generation of robotic engineers, responsible AI and robotics adoption, and rural regeneration
  • Wildflower seeds for your local bees, budding farmer kits, and more

 

Help us Change the World

Fund our campaign, and together we can change our future.

  • End chemical worries: help farmers cut chemicals and CO2 by up to  95%
  • Improve yields to feed the world by 2030
  • Help farmers make a decent living so they can make us decent food
  • Bread, not wheat: help farmers diversify and drive rural resurgence
  • Save the bees, the worms, the insects and the fish

Small is for the Future

 

TLDR...?

That’s it in a nutshell, but for those of you who like the full reveal, take a breath and read on…There's also lots more detail available on request for those technically-minded individuals who really like to get under the hood.

 

What’s our vision?

Robotics are only the first piece of the puzzle in a much bigger picture. It's about a digital future. The fully-fledged digital farm will comprise a much broader ecosystem encompassing robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, and artificial intelligence.

Ultimately, we’re looking at the Digital Transformation of Agriculture. And we want to create an open community that gets this done.

 

Where have we got to?

  • Thanks to our Indiegogo funding, we have developed and build an early prototype of our Harry digital planting robot. This was unveiled at the WIRED Live Innovation festival in November 2018
  • We worked on our 'Jack' of all trades modular workhorse chassis, the basis for both our Harry and Dick robots, together with the UK's leading robotics research institution, the University of Bristol robotics laboratory. Meanwhile the Manufacturing Technology Catapult helped us develop the digital punch planting mechanism for Harry. Harry is now at TLR-4 with three patents pending
  • Our monitoring robot Tom is currently in field trials at 20 farms in the UK, including the National Trust Wimpole Estate
  • We have developed all the core technology needed for our farmbot family. This includes a robotic chassis, autonomy, geolocation, obstacle avoidance, navigation and the ability to accurately position objects on a map within two centimetres
  • Our prototype robot Rachael (an early version of our Tom monitoring robot) has completed phase one of field trials
  • With this data we have already trained our Wilma artificial intelligence to distinguish Wheat from Weeds (and indeed, anything that is not wheat)
  • Hear more about our vision from our co-founders and see our prototype in action here in this video from the IET
  • Rachael was featured in the GREAT Festival of Innovation, a showcase of British innovation by the Department for International Trade in May, and will also be traveling again with the DIT to Delhi for the FutureTech Festival in December 2018
  • And we're getting development help from Ubuntu and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, sponsored by Innovate UK
  • And also technical assistance from the world's leading precision farming institution, Harper Adams university

 

BIG problems

We want to solve three big problems with arable farming:

  • Firstly, blanket spraying of chemicals and its terrible cost on the environment. And because we want consumers to trust the food on their plates
  • Secondly, yield: global population is rising but yield is static
  • Finally, profit: margins have been static at 1-4% for quarter of a century. 85% of UK farms are currently dependent on subsidies, and it’s a problem worldwide

Solving these is crucial to creating a sustainable future for farming, saving our environment and feeding the world.

Today’s problem-solvers have been trying to make farms and tractors BIGGER and better.

But big’s not working.

Unfortunately big tractors are neither efficient nor environmentally friendly. Currently, 90% of energy to establish crops is used ploughing. And ploughing is only necessary because of heavy machinery crushing soil.

 

So, what do our robots actually do?

Our answer is a deceptively simple idea: small robots not big tractors.

Our robots are being designed and built by farmers, for farmers, to solve the problems of today and make a bright future for food and farming. We use robotics and AI to ‘digitise the field’ and deliver precision farming.

  • Precise and extremely lightweight, our robots will seed and care for each individual plant in the crop
  • They will only feed and spray the plants that need it, giving them the perfect levels nutrients and support, with no waste
  • Robust per-plant data creates a ‘profit map’ that shows which areas of field to use, which to leave fallow, and what to plant where and when

 

And the benefits?

  • Small robots are kinder to soil and kinder to the environment
  • They protect biodiversity and enable farmers to be more efficient, more precise and more productive
  • We can also improve yields by around one tonne per hectare
  • And give 10x better decision making
  • And enable permaculture at scale - in a nutshell, ecologically harmonious and sustainable farming, with farmers knowing exactly what is the best specific crop for each area of the field - and what to leave fallow, or put to other use such as for beetlebanks
  • With robots taking on much of the manual labour, farmers will only spend 20% of the time on the things that currently generate 80% of revenue. With more free time, farmers can diversify, making higher value items - jam and bread, not just wheat - to make more of their farms, create jobs  and drive rural resurgence

 

Risks and challenges

We spoke to more than 100 farmers before developing our tech. And the challenges?

Adoption

  • Farmers don’t want to bet the farm, and robotics is a leap in the dark
  • So instead of having to buy our robots, they will be offered through a Farming as a Service (FaaS) model
  • No risk then for them to test drive our robots

‘Not invented here’

  • Farmers don’t like tech being imposed on them from outside
  • With our Farmer Advisory Group, our tech is designed by farmers, for farmers
  • Farmers will get preferential shares in our company, so we’ll keep it that way

Mindset

  • Farmers are cautious and conservative
  • Robotics technology is a radical change
  • Tom, Dick and Harry - and Wilma: the ‘human’ personalities of our robots are friendlier and helping them to be enthusiastically accepted by farmers

 

Competition?

There are a couple of other agritech companies with similar ideas. But we’ve got a march on them.

We’ve already got 15 years of research under our belt via Harper Adams University’s Precision Farming lead, Professor Simon Blackmore, which massively accelerates our development. Harper Adams is at the forefront of international precision farming with its innovative agritech robots and its world-first Hands Free Hectare autonomous farming project.

Plus we have £1 million of funding already in the bag. And a great management team.

 

But wait, there’s more...

  • First access to commercialise 15 years of groundbreaking agritech research by at Harper Adams University, the world’s leading centre for Precision Farming
  • Prestigious Horizontal Innovation™ Award from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the High Value Manufacturing Catapult (HVMC)
  • Nearly £1 million funding award from the UK government
  • One patent already in the process of filing, with more to follow
  • Verification of our robotic farming model target figures by leading farm consultants, Andersons
  • We've spoken at Mobile World Congress, Agritech REAP, Venturefest, and the Oxford Farming Conference, and this year will also speak at Groundswell, Cereals, Tech for Good and CropTec
  • Our main mainstream competitor, Blue River, recently got bought by John Deere for $300 million

 

What if…?

If we exceed our funding target:

  • With £10,000, we can develop a soil sampler to check for pollution and water run off
  • With £20,000, we can build an additional Tom robot, accelerating our capability to build the world’s largest living database by a year
  • With £30,000, we can demo at the leading crop farming show in the UK, Croptec, in November 2018: a fantastic chance to drive early sales

If we don’t meet our funding target, all funding will help take us part of the way:

  • With £5,000 we will add on extra sona lidar capability to enhance Rachael’s obstacle avoidance capabilities
  • With £10,000 we will develop a soil sampler to check for pollution and water run off
  • With £20,000  we can build an additional Tom robot, accelerating our capability to build the world’s largest living database by a year

 

Other Ways You Can Help

Don’t worry if you can't contribute financially - this doesn't mean you can't help:

  • Spread the word - please tell everyone you think will care and help us save the bees
  • The Indiegogo share tools make this super easy
  • Become a Small Robot Ambassador for your chance at our perks for free - contact us to get started

A huge thank you to everyone. Together, with your support, we can help transform the way we farm today, saving our wildlife.

 

 

 

 

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Choose your Perk

Meet the Robots

Meet the Robots

Currency Conversion $1,263 USD
£1,000 GBP
Exclusive guided tour of a UK trial farm, meet our prototype robots and co-founders and our robotics lead over lunch. OR exclusive Burns Night whisky tasting 'hosted' by our prototype robot, Rachael, with our founders & robotics expert (central London). Plus drinks preorder. Ultimate geek Christmas present. Two tickets included.
Included Items
  • SRC badge (UK) or plaque (int)
  • Robot Drinks preorder
  • Fellowship of the Small Robot
  • Exclusive 'Fellowship' T Shirt
  • First Crop A2 poster
Estimated Shipping
May 2019
2 out of 5 of claimed
Ships to United Kingdom

Robot Traineeship

Currency Conversion $2,526 USD
£2,000 GBP
Patron of the Small Robot Foundation. Pay for one student to go through the six-week Robotic Trainee programme in association with Fareham College, including on the job training and classroom learning.
Included Items
  • SRC badge (UK) or plaque (int)
  • Exclusive 'Fellowship' T Shirt
  • First Crop A2 poster
Estimated Shipping
September 2018
2 out of 5 of claimed
Ships worldwide.

Robot Field Trial

Currency Conversion $3,789 USD
£3,000 GBP
Sponsor the first year of robot wheat production (10 hectares) and support our field trial. Visit our trial farm, meet our founders over lunch and see our prototype robots in action. Plus Honorary Fellowship of the Society of the Small Robot.
Included Items
  • SRC badge (UK) or plaque (int)
  • Fellowship of the Small Robot
  • Exclusive 'Fellowship' T Shirt
  • Meet the Robots
  • First Crop A2 poster
Estimated Shipping
October 2018
2 out of 3 of claimed
Robot Farmed Artisanal Bread
sold out

Robot Farmed Artisanal Bread

Currency Conversion $95 USD
£75 GBP
Estimated Shipping
October 2019
5 out of 5 of claimed
Ships to United Kingdom
Future Farmer: be the First
sold out

Future Farmer: be the First

Currency Conversion $6,315 USD
£5,000 GBP
Estimated Shipping
October 2018
6 out of 6 of claimed

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