When last January three young engineers started to place the first screws in a special robot, in Sindo Thessaloniki, they certainly dreamed – but it was probably hard to realize in practice, that just six months later, their creation will not only have stood “on the legs’ (in his crawlers to be exact), but already he’ll be traversing acres of land with vines laden with grapes alone in central Macedonia (Greece), ready to get to work.
The electric robot is the “heart” of the innovative service that the business trio of the start-up “Agroverse” plans to offer to farmers: essentially, it will enable people in the primary sector to take care of their crops without having to buy the robot or be present when it’s working – without even having to press a button.
In very simple words, just as someone connects to an “Uber” type application and “orders” a car to take them to their destination, without having to own a vehicle themselves, farmers or even agriculturists will be able to they call not a driver, but an Agroverse-owned robot that will autonomously navigate the field, handle spraying and mowing, control the harvest, take photos and collect environmental data.
It has been found experimentally on the lands of agricultural cooperatives and wineries
The electrical engineer Giorgos Bontzios, responsible for the commercialization of the “Agroverse Robot”, recently the robot has already been tested on the lands of agricultural cooperatives and wineries, and with some of them the company is very close to an agreement to use it in more from 1000 acres in total, in 2024.
The main problem of the industry today is the lack of manpower. Many farmers told us they had production issues because they didn’t have time to spray the vines or kill the weeds when they should have. That is why they approach the robot with enthusiasm and especially the fact that we offer them a seamless service, that is, the producer does not do anything, does not have to press a single button.
The idea of providing robots as a service in the primary sector, for the first time in Greece, was “born” by the founder and CEO of Agroverse, electrical engineer Dimitris Koutras, a non-professional farmer, with experience in robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
Created entirely by Agroverse engineers
For this first robot, whose software was created entirely by Agroverse engineers, the team received funding of 200,000 euros from the investment fund TECS Capital. At the present stage and in order to be able to serve farmers with total lands of more than 1000 hectares next year, the company plans to produce another three or four new generation (2.0) robots, which aim to be able in 2024 to not only work alone them in the field, but also to autonomously switch to it, from rural roads (starting from an automatic charging station). And, of course, the robot is not only intended for use by winegrowers, but also for other crops: olives, apples, peaches and horticulture.
The Agroverse platform, taking into account the plant protection plan registered by the producer or the agronomist and evaluating the available data (e.g. soil moisture or possible pest infestation) with Artificial Intelligence, will give the order that the mechanical “worker” to automatically switch to cultivation. In fact, the service will be billed by the acre and not “by the hour”, freeing the producer from the stress of how much the robot’s work will cost if it “takes” time.
