Ag Robots as a Service

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

The cost of robotics for agricultural use has come down dramatically in the past decade, but it still can be prohibitive in some cases. That leads some to believe that the path to robots on the farm is on that offers them as a service. Instead of buying a robot to weed your vegetable field, for example, Farmwise will weed your field for you using one of their robotic technology. Here is Farmwise co-founder and CTO Thomas Palomares.

Palomares… “Our price depends a lot on like the type of crops we work on in different sectors, but our goal is always for growers to save money compared to their current practices and so it's really like a scalable and cost-effective alternative. So we're really charging so that they really save money from the first acre they start working with us. That's something that resonates a lot with growers. And a lot of them are really excited about the service model, not to have to try to understand deeply how those systems work. They can just call us, we go on their farm, and we do the work. And a lot of growers, in particular the ones who've been working (with) for several years are now really excited about owning some of these machines and running them themselves.”

Palomares sees this as a way to get robotics out onto the farm. The hope is that the demand for these types of machines will pick up as the industry evolves.