The Autonomous Wheelbarrow

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Labor is the number one issue for a lot of farms, but robotics are still a long way from solving the problem. However, there are technologies coming out to help farmworkers work more safely and efficiently. One of those is a robot named Carry by Future Acres, which CEO Suma Reddy describes as a fully autonomous wheelbarrow to transport freshly picked table grapes.

Reddy… “What we're developing is what we call the harvest sidekick. We're not trying to displace or remove people. Essentially the farm worker works with Carry or the robot to save those two hours out of the day they're spent hauling wheelbarrows around a farm. The wheelbarrow was actually invented in 231 CE in China. And if you look at pictures, if you Google pictures, it's basically the same technology.”

Reddy said this type of technology can be used right away and serve as the next step toward more data, analytics, and autonomy.

Reddy… “You know, apple picking strawberry picking is fantastic to dream about and think about, but we're still a ways away from those commercialization solutions. And again, the question is what do farmers want today? And they're like this actually solves a problem for today. Let's build something that gives you the foundation for the data and analytics, because you have something that can move across a farm and we can start capturing yield. We can start capturing time, like location stamps, etc. And so when you need it we'll be ready.”

Learn more at FutureAcres.co.