Concept: American startup Burro has developed collaborative robots specifically designed for agricultural applications. The collaborative robots platform is designed for growers and for workers doing tedious tasks on the farm to create autonomy in an agricultural operation.
Nature of Disruption: The Burro collaborative robots use computer vision, GPS, and AI to follow people and navigate autonomously from point A to point B. It carries varying payloads according to the crop type. The robots follow rows, handle obstacles, collect data, and scout crops. The robots also come with a remote view for the operator that has an online dashboard view to see the robot map. The robot has 256GB storage with a 4G LTE modem with an air forced cooling system. The maximum payload it can carry has of 226KG with a max speed of 2.25 M/S. It has a power of 5HP with a range of 12.8KM with 2 x 135ah SLA batteries (base) with a charging time of 12 hours.
Outlook: The autonomy in agriculture is mainly focused on autonomous tractors, autonomous weeding, and harvesting meant for automating hard tasks. Burro’s agriculture collaborative robots are people-scalable and help them by moving heavy things around the farm. It addresses ubiquitous pain points in the most labor-intensive areas of agriculture. Also, it captures data and learns from its environment leveraging computer vision and AI on a robotics platform. Burro raised $10.9M in Series A funding led by S2G Ventures and Toyota Ventures. Along with current investors Radicle Growth and ffVC, F-Prime Capital, and the Cibus Enterprise Fund joined the round.
This article was originally published in Verdict.co.uk