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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Augean Robotics

Augean Robotics Raises $1.5M to Build Out Its Burro Platform

Augean Robotics, creators of the “Burro” robot that hauls stuff around farms, announced earlier this week that it had raised $1.5 million seed round. The round was led by ffVC, with participation from S2G Ventures, Radicle Growth, and several others.

The Burro is a squat, rugged, flatbed robot that can autonomously carry 500 pounds of gear or food (or whatever) around working farms. The three levels of autonomy built into Burro allow it to either follow a human around, automatically recognize rows of crops and travel up and down them , or act as a virtual conveyor belt learning and following a path to take materials back and forth (like harvested grapes from pickers to packers).

Augean is on its fifth generation Burro and Augean CEO, Charlie Andersen told me earlier this year that it is currently in trials with four of the nation’s largest growers.

We often cover how the rise of robots and automation will bring with it a cost in human jobs, but the agriculture sector is already facing a human labor shortage, and farm work itself is hard work. Robots can actually be a big help to agriculture, as Andersen explained during our Spoon Slack Chat last month:

Robots can carry out some tasks more safely than a human could. For instance, the Augean Burro can carry 150-plus pounds of grapes for hours in 110 degree weather without getting heat stroke or dehydrated. But in addition to labor changes, robots can also push farms towards more organic production because [robots] can also reduce the amount of chemicals needed and the overall environmental intensity needed for fruit and vegetable production.

Burro in Table Grapes

Ultimately, Andersen said that the Burro is a platform that can be adapted to more than just carrying things. Augean has raised $1.8 million to date and according to the press announcement, plans to use the new funds to “accelerate the commercialization of Burro and to develop the proprietary datasets needed to enable further autonomy.”

This further autonomy, Andersen told me during our conversation, is expanding the Burro’s capabilities to targeting weed spraying, yield mapping, as well as picking and pruning.

If you’re interested in the future of robots in the food chain, you should definitely come to our ArticulATE summit on April 16 in San Francisco. We’ll be discussing robot autonomy, human/robot relations and much much more. Get your ticket today!

Six Suggestions for Alphabet X’s Agriculture Ambitions

Alphabet X (part of Google family of companies), said that it is exploring ways to use AI to improve food production. During the MIT EmTech Digital event in San Francisco yesterday, Astro Teller, the head of X didn’t provide many details other than they may be looking at combining machine learning with drones and robotics for farming.

X is Alphabet’s ambitious “Moonshot Factory,” whose mission is to take on projects that they “hope could someday make the world a radically better place.” As the MIT Technology Review writes:

To be worthy of X’s attention, a project must fulfill three criteria: it has to potentially solve a problem that affects millions or billions of people; it has to involve an audacious, sci-fi-sounding technology; and there has to be at least a glimmer of hope it’s achievable within five to 10 years.

I understand that there are a lot of smart people working at Alphabet, and X’s mission is to invent and launch these world saving technologies. But we cover the intersection of AI and Ag here at The Spoon, and we’d love to put a few early stage startups on X’s radar.

First, let’s assume X is already looking in its own backyard. Sister Alphabet company, Google Ventures, has put money into companies like Abundant Robotics, Skycatch, and Farmers Business Network. And I’m sure Alphabet isn’t above synergizing across platforms to effectuate paradigm improvements throughout their stack.

But after that bit of corporate introspection, X can look outward, and we’re here to help. These are some startups we’ve covered that are intelligently using artificial intelligence or robots to improve food production and reduce food waste, and could make a radical impact at scale:

AgShift uses computer vision and machine learning to create objective food quality assessments throughout the supply chain. Using just a mobile phone app, inspectors can make nationwide food distribution more efficient and effective.

SomaDetect combines old light scattering detection tech with modern AI to determine the quality of milk and early spotting of Mastitis, a serious udder infection that is common–and deadly–among cows.

Farmstead is a grocery delivery startup, but it’s AI facilitates optimized inventory stocking in stores to decrease over-ordering (and subsequent spoilage and waste) as well as increased purchases from local sources.

ImpactVision applies its machine learning to hyperspectral images of food to assess quality and freshness to generate more transparency in the food chain.

Augean Robotics built the Burro, an autonomous worker robot that can carry food or tools and follow farm workers around with no beacon, remote or GPS required. Burro also maps routes to become a mobile conveyor belt for more efficient harvesting.

Huxley creates “plant vision” for farmers and growers. Through a combination of AI and augmented reality glasses, information about the types of plants and their various stages of growth can be quickly surfaced in a heads up display.

Of course, if X wants a deeper look into the future of food, we’re hosting our Smart Kitchen Summit Europe in June. Advances in AgTech are sure to be on the agenda.

Augean Robotics’ Autonomous “Burro” Follows Farm Workers to Haul Stuff

As Augean Robotics Co-Founder and CEO Charles Andersen explains it, when you work on a farm, you do a lot of high dexterity activity—like picking fruit. But you also spend a lot of time just running stuff like harvested fruit or equipment back and forth. He should know: Anderson grew up on a 100-plus acre farm in Pennsylvania.

To help with the repetitive drudgery of hauling items to and fro, Andersen’s company has developed Burro, an autonomous, rugged cart robot that can follow a person around and haul things for them.

The Burro has a 26-inch by 48-inch chassis and comes with a two-wheel and a four-wheel drive option. The two-wheel Burro can carry 300 pounds and the four-wheel drive up to 450 pounds. Burros are powered by sealed lead acid batteries, have a top speed of five miles per hour, and can travel up to 15 miles on a charge.

Using sensors and machine learning algorithms, the Burro can lock on to you as you approach it. From there it will follow you around without the need for you to hold a remote or a beacon. Its following capability, however, isn’t perfect. It can be likened to a dog; if someone else walks in between you and the Burro, it can get distracted. It will stop and wait for you to come back, or for someone else to come within its range.

The Burro can also create an automated route by following a person. For example, if blueberries are being harvested, it can follow a farmer who walks around a particular row of plants. The Burro then learns this route and can go around on its own. Each picker on that row can then set their harvested baskets of berries on the Burro as it passes by on its route.

The goal is to create a robot that collaborates with, rather than replaces, human workers. Farm workers can stick to high dexterity tasks like picking fruit while the nimble Burro navigates its way around people and crops to move stuff around where it needs to go. To achieve that, Andersen wants to keep Burro small, so farms can have many of them just running around all the time carrying fruit, tools, or whatever needs to be moved.

Each Burro costs between $9,000 and $10,000, though Andersen says that half of that cost goes towards one sensor that’s key to making the robot autonomous. He claims the price of that should come down in the future, making Burros a lot less expensive. Augean’s ultimate plan is to make the Burro a platform, and offer expansion kits that allow the robot to do more tasks.

Based in Phoenixville, PA, Augean is currently bootstrapped and has five people working on the product. It uses Anderson’s 191 acre farm for testing purposes, and hopes to have field trials with big growers this summer.

If it takes off, farmhands could soon get a big hand from a bunch of small robots.