Robotics vs Machinery

Robotics Companies Trying To Go Mainstream on Farms

By Tim Hammerich, with the Ag Information Network

Robotics companies are betting the farm on automation being adopted by agricultural producers. But in order for robots to be adopted by farmers, the perception needs to change from looking at them as simply another piece of farm machinery. Something that operates completely on its own, says Burro founder Charlie Andersen, needs to be evaluated differently than equipment that you have to operate.

“You look at a used tractor, that’s 80 horsepower, and it will sell for like 20 grand. Right? And I think that farmers in their heads, as they’re looking at these systems, they have a narrative of like, ‘here’s the piece of hardware that I used to buy’. And you’ve got these smaller devices or different shape devices. You’re not really buying a piece of hardware. You’re buying a thing that does a task on its own. People are really, really expensive and they’re oftentimes are much more expensive than the equipment that is doing a lot of the mechanized work. I think there’s a shifting perception in terms of autonomous systems versus what’s out there today,” said Anderson

Andersen’s company Burro offers a people-scale autonomous cart that transports hand picked produce during harvest.

“Like, you know, if you look at an ATV. An ATV in our case sells like eight grand, and we’re selling a product that’s roughly double that in the first year, but it’s worth that much more because it is driving itself. It’s not just a piece of hardware,” Anderson said.

This is one key challenge ag robotics companies need to overcome for more widespread adoption of this technology.

California Ag Today2021-08-31T20:34:52-07:00August 31st, 2021|

Automation in Specialty Crops Part 2

Automation is Going Beyond Harvest

By Tim Hammerich, with the Ag Information Network

The Burro, is an autonomous robot that transports fruit from where it is picked to where it is packed. But Burro CEO Charlie Andersen sees this innovation going far beyond just helping with harvest. He sees it as a platform to bring automation onto specialty crop farms.

“The challenge with these industries is that each respective crop is relatively small from a market size perspective,” said Anderson. “For that reason, I think that what you’re going to have is companies that are focused on doing things like yields in blueberries, yields in table grapes, digital entomology in certain spaces. They’re gonna be taking data off of platforms like ours, and then providing that data back to growers in a creative way. And we see our platform being something that enables them to do that,” said Andersen.

Andersen also sees the platform as an economical entry point which may lead to not only data, but potentially crop scouting and spot spraying.

“And so most of the customers that we are working with right now see this logical progression. They recognize that if we get autonomy into our operation, we might get like a 20 to 40% efficiency today, which is quite significant with labor going to 15 or 18 bucks an hour with when it’s fully burdened. But beyond that, you have a vision based platform online that can over time be scaled up to do more things,” Andersen said.

Learn more about Burro on tomorrow’s episode of “The Business of Blueberries” Podcast which can be downloaded any podcast player.

California Ag Today2020-09-14T11:09:26-07:00September 14th, 2020|

Robotic Dairies Saves on Labor

Robotics Slowly Coming Into California Dairy Barns

By Patrick Cavanaugh, Editor

It’s all associated with labor shortages, and skills and dairies aim to do something about it by bringing in robotics into the milking parlor

“If you have 3,000 cows, robotics will be a huge investment; however, most of the data collected is for robots in smaller operations,” said Daniela Bruno, who earned a Veterinary Medicine degree in Brazil and then went to grad school at UC Davis. She is a UCANR Dairy Advisor for Fresno County. “Many dairies are interested in how the robots will work in their operation because of major labor shortages,” she said.

The robotic milking machines are stationary in the milking barn, and cows will walk in at an assigned amount of times per day. “I talk about large versus small operations, because each robot, can milk between 65 and 70 cows so that you would need a lot of robots for a 3,000 cow dairy,” Bruno said.

Robotic arm milks a cow.

As far as installing robots, the manufacturer has to come up with a plan. Sometimes they need to build a new barn.

Bruno noted that smaller dairies on the East Coast or Midwest have many robots, but they’re smaller operations. “They have two or three robots per dairy, while the largest one, to my knowledge, is in Chile, which has 64 milking robots,” noted Bruno.

“But it’s growing in California, due to labor regulations and the number of hours that the workers can milk cows. Dairies are now thinking if they had robots, then they will have to worry less about all the labor issues,” she said.

Bruno described how these robots work, how the cows get to the robots for milking.

“The cows have a collar, and there are several sorting gates that lead to the robot. So let’s say the cow feels the urge to be milked, but the last time she was milked was less than four hours ago. She does not have the permission to be milked again,” noted Bruno. “The dairy can decide if they want the cows milked two, three, or four times a day,” she noted.

The permissions are based on the lactation stage or if she’s a heifer if she’s a first, a second lactation cow. They’re going to control it, and everything is stored in software. And when she approaches the gate, the gate is going to open for the cow if she’s allowed to go, or if she’s not going to be able to be milked yet, the cow is sent to a waiting place where she can rest and eat.

When a cow gets the permission, she walks into the robot milking machines, which will do everything that a dairy employee would do. “It prepares the cow, cleans the cow, and stimulates the cow, then the milking equipment is automatically put on the udders,” Bruno said. “And once the cow is done milking, it applies the post dipping sanitizer on the teat, and the cow is released to go back to its bedding area.”

Bruno said that the robots have many cameras, so they know exactly what they’re doing when they’re pre-treating the cow before milking and milking the cow and post treating the cow after the milking with sanitizer.

And while dairies will need less labor in the milking barn, there will still require employees to maintain the equipment, and there are several companies that offer that service, and prices vary.

“In California, I know of two dairies that have robots already. They’re both in Stanislaus County, and one of the dairies is planning to expand to 10 robots,” she said.

“The dairy operators are pleased to have the robots in place and feel that they could pay for themselves in short order,” Bruno said.

Bruno said she is working with dairy economic specialist Fernanda Ferreira at the UC Davis research center in Tulare, where there is a project focused on the financial analysis of robots.

California Ag Today2021-05-12T11:17:08-07:00November 6th, 2019|