FarmDroid is an autonomous precision farming robot that helps to increase yields, while cutting C02 emissions and preventing soil damageFarmDroid is the world’s leading autonomous seeding and weeding robot. FarmDroid ApS was founded in 2018 by Jens Warming and Kristian Warming, together with the Innovation Environment Syddansk Innovation A/S, REInvest Robotics as well as investors and advisers.
The Challenge
With each year, more pressure and demand are put on farmers and the agricultural industry to switch to more environmentally friendly techniques, to reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides, and lower CO2 emissions. All while still delivering affordable and tasty products for the end consumers. With some crops large numbers of manual workers are still required in certain processes, such as weeding. Not only has it become harder to attract workers to do these jobs because of both the COVID pandemic and Brexit, but having people perform the work is also a huge risk since 20-30% of young seedlings can be lost due to human errors when weeding.
The Solution
The FarmDroid FD20 is the world’s leading autonomous seeding and weeding robot. With the use of high precision GPS technology, the robot is able to mark the exact position of each crop and subsequently perform weed control both between the rows and inside the rows. The robot is not only reducing or completely eliminating the need for manual weeding, but it is also reducing the loss of crops. As a result, farmers get a bigger yield – in some cases even 20-30%.
Manual labour is very expensive. One FarmDroid FD20 can cultivate up to 20 hectares, saving countless of workhours, recruitment, and housing of farmhands.
The four solar panels on top of the robot charges two batteries, which power the robot. On pure solar energy, it can operate up to 24 hours a day, without the need to externally charge the batteries. For this reason, the operation of the FarmDroid is completely CO2 neutral.
Given the robot’s light weight of only 900 kg it preserves the soil’s delicate microstructure. Thus, damage to the soil’s structure that would otherwise be caused by heavy farm machinery is eliminated.
As of today, the robot has already successfully taken care of many different types of crops, such as:
- Sugar beets
- Red beets
- Beetroots
- Spinach
- Salad
- Parsley
- Herbs
- Onions
- Rapeseed
In the summer of 2022, the FarmDroid had already seeded and weeded 18.000 hectares spread over the UK, Canada and large parts of Europe.
Proof
Customer Testimonial
“Before we got the robot, we had 20 people on average hired to remove weed every day, and they of course need to be taken care of with food and drinks, and now there is no need for that because the robot works completely on its own.”