Robotics

DroneUp
A new acquisition in the drone services sector may be instrumental in moving the commercial and recreational drone industries significantly toward broader adoption. DroneUp, a delivery drone provider, is acquiring AirMap, which makes the most comprehensive airspace management software solution in the world.The news is important as drone operations will soon hit tens of thousands of flights per day, which is beyond human scale air traffic control operations. As airspace becomes more congested, autonomous drones need to be navigated separately, safely, and at broad scale to deconflict with one another and with manned aviation. DroneUp, which focuses on drone delivery services, is particularly interested in offering streamlined air traffic control for its delivery partners and to aid regulators in adopting drone delivery infrastructure. The aim for DroneUp and others in the space is to provide ability for companies to employ drones to deliver goods, medicines, and medications beyond line of sight, over people and at night, and do so safely. “We’ve integrated with the best aerospace teams to bring drone delivery and flight services to market faster and more economically with our patented flight management software, and now the industry’s number one UTM solution,” explains DroneUp CEO Tom Walker. “We believe DroneUp has a moral obligation to continue investment in and expansion of the AirMap platform. We will ensure this resource remains openly available to the drone industry, municipalities, and the FAA.”DroneUp recently entered into a partnership with Walmart to offer drone delivery to consumers from a growing network of drone airports, called DroneUp “Hubs.” It’s easy to imagine how integration of a comprehensive air management system into the offering helps DroneUp consolidate its position as an end-to-end service provider, particularly amid the drone sector’s evolving compliance and regulatory landscape. AirMap has been out front working with the FAA on adoption of its platform for years.”Not only is AirMap a UTM company, they are also a global leader in digital automated air traffic management (ATM) with a best-in-class market share, geographic footprint, and seamless platform technology that supports stakeholders across several ecosystems,” says John Vernon, DroneUp’s CTO and representative to the FAA’s Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) Aviation Rulemaking Committee (ARC). “Transformative advances in technology are driving positive change for society, fueling decarbonization, de-congestion, and the democratization of transportation. UTM is a key enabler to high-density drone and urban air mobility (UAM) operations while unlocking autonomy and flight safety at scale. We look forward to continuing positive innovation.”The acquisition is being closely watched in the industry — both of these companies are sector and the consolidation marks an important milestone in the commercial drone landscape. DroneUp operates commercially throughout the U.S. and is an authorized government drone services provider for 13 states serving public sector organizations. It has more than 190 active waivers and authorizations with the FAA. AirMap is one of three UTM providers currently deployed internationally and provides UTM in Switzerland with a geographic footprint and customer base stretching from North America to Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia. More

Nuro

Innovation

Autonomous delivery company Nuro and 7-Eleven just launched what they’re billing as the first autonomous commercial delivery service in the state of California. The launch capitalizes on Nuro’s receipt of a deployment permit from the California DMV, the first for an AV company.Like most autonomous delivery testbeds and deployments, the rollout is decidedly modest, but it could portend a near future in urban and suburban areas. Residents of Mountain View, CA, can now order items through 7-Eleven’s 7NOW delivery app and receive them via Nuro’s autonomous vehicles. The new service will begin with Nuro’s self-driving Priuses and later introduce its R2, the company’s occupantless autonomous delivery vehicles custom built to transport products and goods.”Our first foray into autonomous delivery was in 2016 when 7-Eleven became the first retailer in the U.S. to make a drone delivery to a customer’s house,” says Raghu Mahadevan, 7-Eleven Chief Digital Officer. “Since then, we haven’t stopped looking for ways to redefine convenience for our customers inside and outside the four walls of our stores. Fast forward to 2021, and we are pushing the boundaries of innovation even further to provide customers with the first commercial autonomous delivery service in California. I can’t wait to see where we go from here.”Overall, the market for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) is forecasted to generate over $10bn by 2023, according to Interact Analysis. That prediction relies on data from before the COVID-19 pandemic. Enterprising companies like Starship Technologies have launched pilot programs in controlled access spaces, such as college campuses. Delivery robot developers, in particular, are capitalizing on touchless fulfillment trends associated with the pandemic.In December 2020, Nuro achieved a milestone by becoming the first autonomous vehicle company to receive a deployment permit from the CA DMV. The company seems to be rapidly pivoting from development into deployment, particularly in the southwest. Nuro recently announced a $40 million investment to develop its two newest facilities — an end-of-line manufacturing facility and a world-class closed-course test track. The company has already partnered with some of the country’s biggest brands, including Kroger and CVS.”Residents in the state of California — a major hub of innovation — have never been able to experience the commercial delivery of goods by an autonomous vehicle. Nuro is teaming up with 7-Eleven to change that,” says Jiajun Zhu, Nuro CEO and Co-Founder. “We’ve always wanted to bring Nuro’s autonomous delivery to our local community and to our neighbors. We couldn’t be more excited to do this with an iconic neighborhood store like 7-Eleven in our hometown, Mountain View.” More

A robot-powered mobile pizzeria is set to launch in Los Angeles in 2022. We’ve heard this idea before — pair robot-created pizza with mobile delivery — and it ended in disaster. Will this version take off?

Innovation

It just might, and the timing could be a key ingredient. It’s often the case that being first to the party isn’t advantageous. Zume Pizza, once reportedly valued at a somewhat ludicrous $2+ billion, learned that lesson the hard way, closing up its robotic pizza business in early 2020 and laying off more than 100 employees.But where Zume’s lofty ambitions of becoming an efficiency-obsessed logistics enterprise, something akin to the Amazon of pizza, led to a burn rate that topped $10 million per day, new outfits and old favorites are taking a more measured approach to technology-enhanced pizza and doing so in a post-COVID-19 pandemic environment that’s shifted the quick-serve industry on its access. That includes developers like Piestro, which makes a made-to-order pizza vending machine, and even sector staples like Little Caesars, which recently patented a pizza-making robot.The latest example is the robotics-powered mobile pizza restaurant, Stellar Pizza, which recently announced it will launch in the emerging tech hub of Los Angeles in Spring 2022. The company is the brainchild of former SpaceX engineer turned CEO Benson Tsai. SpaceX alums make up the engineering team, as well, and the recipes are partly the creation of former SpaceX Executive Chef and Director of Culinary Services Ted Cizma. The idea is to use cutting-edge technology and advanced robotics to revolutionize pizza prep and delivery. With its new pizza machine, Stellar Pizza can create a fully baked pizza in under five minutes at a production rate of a pizza every 45 seconds. The robot is part of a food truck concept that can deliver a larger quantity of fresh, gourmet pizzas more consistently than its brick-and-mortar counterparts. Sound familiar?The business model isn’t far off from Zume’s, except that Zume’s ambitions caused it to topple. Zume attracted $375 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund and began to scale with great technology before having a viable business plan. The company also missed the biggest boon to the food delivery sector since wax-lined paper containers: a global pandemic that in one swoop eliminated in-person dining for much of the world for a long stretch and attuned consumers to an obsessiveness with sterile preparation practices.Enter the robots. Developers have been doing backflips, and early entrants into the automated food prep space, including the creators of Flippy, the burger-making robot, are hitting an adoption stride that would have seemed unlikely not long ago. Salad-making vending machines and autonomous ground robots delivering takeout are now a reality, albeit a nascent reality confined for the time being to smaller testbeds. In that light, Zume’s flop in January 2020 might seem a bit like that video of the marathon runner collapsing just before the finish line. 

For Stellar, the robotic pizza-making process starts with a freshly prepared ball of raw pizza dough, which gets pressed and shaped into a round pizza crust. Then, house-made sauce and fresh toppings are added. Lastly, the raw pizza is inserted into one of four high-temperature custom-designed ovens to bake to perfection. In other words, it’s exactly how you’d make a pizza if you were a human; a robot just does it. There’s nothing particularly unsettling or unexpected in the idea of automating a repeatable, high-output process. Frankly, the guy with flour all over his arms twirling a pie at a creosote ceiling is a bigger head-scratcher. That’s why robotic pizza production is a good idea, one that’s bound to take off sooner rather than later. Whether Stellar — or any company — emerges as a revolutionizing player in a sector that seems to be doing pretty well remains to be seen. Pizza production will almost certainly benefit from new technology. But the pizza game probably doesn’t need a new unicorn.  More

Locomation
Can autonomous vehicles lower the carbon footprint of the transportation and shipping sector? According to a new environmental impact evaluation, the answer seems to be an emphatic yes in certain cases.Locomation, the developer of autonomous trucking technology solutions, is trumpeting the findings of an independent environmental impact evaluation that found its Autonomous Relay Convoy (ARC) system will dramatically reduce the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) footprint, fuel consumption, and operating costs of transporting goods by truck. That’s potentially an important selling point as the urgency to clean up the environmental impact of the booming logistics sector rises. Freight, in particular, is a larger emitter of particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). According to the EPA, the transportation sector is responsible for:Over 50% of NOx total emissions inventory in the U.S.Over 30% of VOCs emissions in the U.S.Over 20% of PM emissions in the U.S.  Autonomous freight potentially makes a big impact through carefully structured driving efficiencies in which routes, speed, and deviations can be carefully controlled. However, we’re still a ways from seeing fully autonomous trucks in regular freight use on American roads.See also: Follow-the-leader: A shortcut to autonomous trucking.Locomation’s solution, however, has a much lower adoption threshold. The efficiency of its system comes via a strategy of convoying multiple trucks that are electronically tethered to follow the leader, which a human drives.”This report confirms that Locomation’s ARC system means dramatic efficiency gains,  saving fuel and eliminating idling and empty miles, and can help carriers and shippers dramatically reduce their Scope 1 and Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas emissions,” explains Dr. Çetin Meriçli, Locomation’s CEO and co-founder. “We are proud to be the first company to verify its green claims with an independent, third-party, science-based review, and we invite anyone making claims around environmental impact or fuel consumption to do the same. “The Human-Guided Autonomy solution enables one driver to operate the lead truck while a second driver rests in the follower truck, which is operating autonomously. In a drill that calls to mind a high school relay, the trucks change places to allow each driver to take turns leading and resting in compliance with U.S. Department of Transportation Hours-of-Service regulations. This scheme enables carriers to safely operate two trucks for 20-22 hours per day, delivering double the cargo, faster, and twice the distance.

There’s an obvious efficiency advantage here, but less obvious is the large emissions reduction. The recent report, conducted by Boundless Impact Research & Analytics, Inc, concluded that Locomation’s technology would, in comparison to normal Class 8 freight transport, decrease Fuel Consumption 21% and lower photochemical ozone formation by 22%. The Boundless test used a methodology based on a standard model for the transportation of goods by a long-haul Class 8 truck carrying 1 ton of goods for 1 kilometer (km) on a highway.”Our environmental impact assessment of Locomation’s technology provided a science-based and independent critique and comparison of the environmental benefits of several trucking technologies,” said Boundless Director of Research Bret Strogen. “Locomation’s autonomous trucking system would offer a significant environmental improvement over other common fuel reduction technologies such as Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control and Idle Reduction Technology.” The cool thing here is that the technology is already compliant with existing transportation regulations. The company is fast moving toward claiming bragging rights as the first autonomous trucking technology company to routinely engage in commercial operations at scale in the United States with its ARC system starting in late 2022 with Wilson Logistics and following with PGT Trucking in 2023. More

The past five years have seen robots move from a developing technology in a number of sectors to an indispensable tool supporting operations across a vast range of enterprises. Logistics, manufacturing, materials handling, inspection, healthcare… the list of sectors that have “gone robotic” in short order is long indeed, and with industries like construction and delivery reaching a tipping point, there can be no denying we’re in the midst of a robotic renaissance.We’re also at a fulcrum moment. Automation technologies are maturing, developers are merging and standardizing engineering approaches, and technologies like AI and machine vision are intersecting to unlock a new wave of capability and efficiency.In other words, it’s an exciting moment in robotics. We surveyed some of the most respected and innovation-minded executives shaping the world of automation on what they expect in 2022 and beyond. The below predictions are from the front lines of the robotics world, and while challenges clearly exist, the future looks bright indeed. #1. Interoperability is the next big hurdleBrian GerkeyCo-Founder & CEO, Open Robotics”With the growing maturation of the collaborative robotics world, there’s a logical inflection point with end users that I’m beginning to see more frequently. Industries such as healthcare, e-commerce, logistics, manufacturing, and others are all adopting a second or third wave of robots. And in most cases, those robot purchases are different from the ones already in place. Interoperability is the next big challenge in robotics. If a robot from Vendor A doesn’t communicate with a robot from Vendor B, then the end-user is going to have a problem on their hands. That was the challenge we’ve been tackling at a healthcare facility in Singapore since 2018, and one we continue to address through our Open-RMF initiative. It’s not only vital that robots from different companies can communicate with each other, but this lingua robotica also needs to extend to other devices such as smoke alarms, elevators, and more.”#2. Creativity in robotics will flourishWendy Tan WhiteCEO, Intrinsic”In the coming years, I’m excited to see more creativity and innovation emerge from the industrial robotics space. We’re on the cusp of an industrial robotics renaissance, driven by software-first solutions, cheaper sensing, and more abundant data. When more developers and entrepreneurs also get to leverage cutting-edge AI, perception, and simulation tools – previously infeasible things may become highly practical, and those never-imagined become very plausible. It’s going to be an exciting decade as industrial robots are reimagined in the context of our work and lives.”#3. Robots will really deliver

Prof. Robin R. Murphy, PhD  Texas A&M University”2022 will be the year robot delivery finally takes off. Our analysis showed that during the first year of the pandemic, drones were used for medical applications in cities delivering samples and reagents from hospitals to laboratories faster than vehicles could drive across town. The overall performance and safety should convince naysayers that this can work in urban areas, not just rural areas.”#4. Tech-enabled recyclingMatanya HorowitzFounder & CEO, AMP Robotics

“2022 will be the year recycling really advances toward an inflection point, driven by AI, robotics, and data capture, as well as a broader appreciation for the environmental and economic impacts of keeping resources in use. Both consumers and corporates have started pushing for greater use of recyclable material, and in ’22, we believe this will combine with the capabilities of these new technologies to begin to transform the recycling industry. Importantly, these technologies are strengthening existing infrastructure and enabling the development of new infrastructure to maximize the volume and quality of recycled feedstock at a lower cost than what might have been possible previously, creating value for companies across the circular economy.”#5. Robots take to sidewalksAli KashaniCo-Founder & CEO, Serve Robotics”In 2022, we expect to see self-driving commercialized, with sidewalk robots starting to see scaled deployment across major cities. After over a decade of R&D, for the first time, we will realize the economic value of autonomous mobility as the marginal cost of robotic delivery falls below the rising labor cost.”#6. Adoption is a givenMatthew RendallCEO, OTTO Motors”When OTTO Motors sold its first autonomous mobile robot in 2015, AMRs simply hadn’t existed before, and our earliest customers were making a bet on the future of our industry. Eight years later and thousands of AMRs successfully deployed, today’s buyer is considerably more savvy about what to look for in an autonomous material handling robot. The most common questions today focus on the sophistication of the robot’s software, system-level reliability, and the total cost of ownership of an installation. In early installations, the risk was adopting a new technology. Today, the risk is adopting proven technology from the wrong supplier. Downtime is the hidden killer of ROI.” More

What do you bring to Thanksgiving when your aunt is gluten-free, grandma needs to stay away from sodium, and your brother has a dairy allergy? Finding a dish that can meet everyone’s dietary restrictions while also tasting delicious is a challenge. 

Innovation

Sony AI believes that in the near future, AI can help. Sony AI is pursuing a digital canvas that allows rich conversations between AI systems and chefs, helping them go even further with their creations and develop new and unique recipes. Their research in the area of gastronomy aims to one day change the way chefs create food combinations, pairings, and platings and assist chefs in their process of developing new, original recipes that are also healthy and support sustainability for the environment. That includes ingredient pairing and recipe creation.It’s an interesting use case for AI, given gastronomy’s position, straddling both science and art. To learn more about the effort, I reached out to Dr. Michael Spranger, COO of Sony AI, to discuss AI technology’s methodology and future applications in the world of gastronomy.GN: How did Sony AI first become interested in gastronomy as a use case for the technology?Dr. Michael Spranger: Simply put, gastronomy is a fascinating area of unchartered territory for Sony. Just like Music, Films and Games, we see Gastronomy as a global entertainment business, with technological advancements constantly contributing to its progress. Kitchens over the years have evolved with new technology, and chefs bring some of the purest creativity to that technology.Our aim is to develop technology, and more specifically AI and Robotics, for chefs that empowers them to be even more creative in developing delicious dishes while also helping them to drive issues such as health and sustainability. 

In the area of recipe creation, we think that AI can assist chefs to explore vast amounts of data associated with food, including existing recipes, chemical and molecular composition and other factors like nutritional or environmental impact data to create a new dish. With robotics in the kitchen, we are hoping to assist chefs in their cooking process, from food preparation and cooking to serving and plating. Neither of these research areas are easy to solve, and that is exactly why we felt they were appropriate for us to set as a grand challenge in our Gastronomy Flagship Project.   GN: There’s a perception that AI and automation are replacements for humans. How do you envision chefs working with the technology, and what has the reaction been so far?Dr. Michael Spranger: Sony AI’s initial focus is on high-end restaurants and their chefs. Our role is to enhance what chefs do already, driving creativity by thinking about, for instance, how to use algorithms to put more data into their hands during recipe creation and conceptualization; how to use robotic systems to elevate the quality and quantity of what is possible in the kitchen during a dinner rush; how to deliver human and robot collaboration at plating, to enable previously impossible designs of dishes. Creativity is not an easy route for doing things — just look at El Bulli, the world’s best restaurant that had to close for months of the year to develop its groundbreaking food — and we think we can play a role supporting it. A good example of this is in recipe creation itself. A challenge we have is to understand how far we should be taking recommendations in recipe creation. It doesn’t feel like our role is to tell chefs what they should cook or how they should cook it. We are not trying to replace their experience or knowledge. We are trying to create a dialogue so that an AI system could say to a chef, for instance: the raspberries you found in the market today, one molecular pairing theory says seaweed would be a good match for them; and based on what has traditionally been paired with raspberries in North America, these spicy, tangy ingredients could also go well; meanwhile, here are some ingredients that would pair well and are local to you; and these ingredients would pair well and are dairy-free; these ingredients are low in salt… etc. What do you think? What does your experience tell you to do with this information? Which ingredients will you select, and how will you bring them together?GN: Were there unique challenges (or opportunities) when it comes to teaching an AI to work with flavor and taste, realms that straddle an interesting line between science and art?Dr. Michael Spranger: One challenge is how subjective and the specific flavour is. Taste an apple, and you probably have a different perception of its flavour in your mind to me. But also, you have just one perception of one apple out of 7,500 apple varieties. It’s difficult for any system to account for an individual’s personal experiences of ‘apple’, and the specific flavour data of each of the 7,500 apple varieties (and the millions of other ingredients in the world) is not currently kept in one place. So, given this lack of clarity, how to make recommendations and suggestions surrounding flavour and taste? This is a huge challenge, but it is also what AI is particularly well suited to help with: personalization and accumulation are rich tools for us to explore.GN: What have been the biggest surprises when it comes to flavors?Dr. Michael Spranger: One surprise is how, for gourmet chefs, it is not only the concept of ‘this tastes good’ that matters in flavour. They also care about whether the flavour has a good story to it. Or whether the flavour is a new one. Or whether the flavour matches twelve other flavours they have on the menu. This presents another challenge for AI, which is to understand the motivation for a recipe… maybe you want to create something that has never been done before. Maybe you want to create something that has been done once before by one particularly famous chef. Maybe you want to create something that has been done for centuries, in a particular way, by a city of people. In terms of surprising flavour combinations, there are many! A personal favourite was chocolate, junmai sake, and cauliflower. 

Artificial Intelligence More

Berkshire Grey

Innovation

Between labor shortages, COVID continuing to wreak havoc on the supply chain, and the upcoming holiday season (in which e-commerce is expected to grow up to 15%), retailers, e-commerce, and warehouses will face a challenging few months to meet increased consumer demands. These businesses are already sounding the alarm bells and actively looking for innovative new ways to keep pace while at the same time maintaining and attracting new employees — and robotic automation is a frontrunner solution.Brick-and-mortar stores are increasingly fulfilling e-commerce sales, and in 2021, more than 80% of all retail sales, inclusive of e-commerce, will come from brick-and-mortars. That’s driven traditional vendors to amplify their fulfillment operations well beyond in-store pickup.Enter Berkshire Grey, an AI-enabled robotic supply chain solution provider that supports businesses including Fortune 50 retailers and logistics service providers like Walmart, Target and FedEx. On the heels of a recently announced Robotic Pick and Pack (RPP) and Robotic Shuttle Put Wall (RSPW) solutions that increase order sortation throughput by up to 300%, I caught up with the company’s VP of Products, Kishore Boyalakuntla, to talk robots and e-commerce heading into the holidays.GN: How do you think the current state of e-commerce in 2021 will impact the adoption of robotic solutions? Please cite some specific factors.Kishore Boyalakuntla: E-commerce is growing at a lightning-fast rate. E-commerce share of retail sales grew to 19% in 2020, the incredible growth of 32% YOY and projected to be 25% of all retail sales in 2025. This skyrocketing growth results from purchases for every facet of our lives — ordering holiday gifts, getting groceries, ordering furniture for a new apartment — you name it.This record growth is nearly impossible to keep pace with without automation. Peak season used to mean upping hiring slightly — now, large companies are seeking one hundred thousand seasonal employees in the midst of a crippling labor shortage. More companies are turning to robotic solutions not to get ahead of the e-commerce boom but just to keep up with their existing orders and have hope for the holiday season. Automation is a given — it’s just when, what and how that some are still figuring out. GN: What are the lingering hurdles to the adoption of robotic sorting and throughput for firms of various sizes? Why might a company still be on the fence?

Kishore Boyalakuntla: Some companies might be wary of implementing or expanding their robotics solutions for a few reasons – cost, potential downtime, or lack of facility space among them – though these concerns can be easily mitigated. Robotic automation is the only way to plan for future growth while optimizing the workforce with less than 3 years of ROI. Robots can also be brought on-site in phases while reducing potential downtime. They’re also modular and configurable, so managing existing facility space need not be a concern. GN: What kind of setup time are we seeing for the adoption of robotic solutions for e-commerce? How has that changed in the last few years, and what accounts for that?Kishore Boyalakuntla: The time to implement robotics solutions is shortening thanks to artificial intelligence quickly. As AI gets smarter, we’ve trimmed implementation time down to 2.5 weeks in some cases. As recent as last year, this would have taken a month and a half to accomplish. There are a lot of factors that contribute to this — like how large the facility is, the scale of the deployment, how pliable the upstream and downstream are, etc. Still, we can expect this process to continue to get shorter as AI systems advance. GN: What’s the ROI timeline for logistics providers adopting various kinds of automation into their processes?Kishore Boyalakuntla: ROI for providers can be a year or up to 3 years – given ROI comes in many forms. Some companies can’t fulfill 30% of the orders they receive unless they hire a new workforce, meaning they can’t deliver hundreds of thousands of packages. Others have 40% turnover among staff every month. So depending on how many of these issues are compounding on one business, the potential for ROI could be immediate and massive if it means just meeting your existing orders.  GN: What do the next 5 to 10 years hold for e-commerce and logistics where automation is concerned?Kishore Boyalakuntla: In the next five to ten years, e-commerce will continue growing rapidly with expansion into new segments, forcing automation into the limelight. We’ll see some level of robotic automation applied across almost all warehouse and logistics facilities — it won’t just be considered a “nice to have,” it’ll be “need to have” for companies of the future to survive. It is quite possible that the current labor shortage will become even more acute, forcing companies to consider how they can best upskill their workforce to fill more complex and creative jobs. With robots taking on more of the work humans don’t want to do, the door will be wide open for careers in fulfillment that allow those same employees to advance long-term. This shift will improve efficiency and create a pathway for people to transition to more fulfilling jobs like managing the robotics and AI solutions in the facilities.  More

Fieldin

Innovation

Acquisitions are shaking up the smart farming landscape. The latest example comes via Fieldin, the world’s largest smart farm operations management company for high-value crops, which has acquired agricultural autonomous driving company Midnight Robotics.The acquisition is a sign of rapid maturation in smart farming, which uses IoT sensors and AI to manage farm operations with unprecedented precision and is helping reshape food manufacturing in wealthy markets. The acquisition creates a sensor-based operational farming platform with autonomous driving technologies to empower growers in the day-to-day management of their farms. It’s the ag equivalent of the lights out farm, and the concept has already been deployed in large California farms.”Many people think that autonomous tractors are some magic solution, but at the end of the day, they’re just machinery — your autonomous farm can only be as good as your farm management data, and that’s why this acquisition is driving the autonomous farming revolution forward,” says Boaz Bachar, CEO and Co-Founder of Fieldin. “Over the past eight years, we’ve digitized hundreds of farms and over 10,000 tractors and pieces of farming equipment — more than anyone else in the high-value crop world — and amassed a trove of invaluable data that can offer insights into best practices in farm management. By acquiring Midnight Robotics, we’re helping farmers close the loop from insight to autonomous action, so they know exactly what they need to do and execute it autonomously, all through the same platform.”Agriculture has been rapidly adopting IoT and automation technology in response to growing pressures that include labor scarcity, climate change, and drought. Precision agriculture, the catch-all for digital technology-powered farming, is being adopted in various use cases to introduce manufacturing-level efficiencies into food production. Fieldin’s platform collects farming data via distributed sensor networks and offers guided decision-making insights about things like pesticide use and water management. Thanks to the addition of autonomous tractors, the decisions can now be executed autonomously. Fieldin is retrofitting tractors and other farming machinery with LiDAR-based autonomy kits that feed data back to its platform in real-time.”It’s not enough to have great agricultural data or great autonomous technology — you need to have both to make autonomous farming a reality. What’s so powerful about this merger is the potent combination of Fieldin’s unparalleled farming data collection, which includes over 49 million hours’ worth of tractor driving, with our driverless technology expertise,” Midnight Robotics co-founder Yonatan Horovitz. “We’re excited to join forces with Fieldin because only together will we be able to help farmers reap the benefits of smart and autonomous farming — not a decade from now, but today.”The company’s retrofit kit is capable of turning any tractor into a robot using advanced LiDAR perception algorithms. More