Most notably, Bear Flag Robotics, a developer of autonomous driving technology for tractors, was acquired by John Deere for $250 million. 6 with SeedInvest, an equity crowdfunding platform.ĭespite this shutdown, the agricultural robotics market has seen healthy investment in 2021. That includes more than $1 million from a campaign that ends on Oct. Curt Salisbury is now a principal research scientist at Amazon, Dan Steere is an independent consultant, as well as an advisor to a number of companies, including Savioke, and Michael Eriksen is a senior staff robotics engineer at Canvas Construction.įuture Acres has raised $1.25 million since it was founded in September 2020. Buehler is well known in the robotics industry, having previously worked in high-level roles at Boston Dynamics, Creator, Disney Imagineering, iRobot, Medtronic, and Vecna.Ībundant’s founders have all moved on. Martin Buehler was named CTO of Wavemaker Labs in July 2020. Some of its other portfolio companies in the robotics space include Miso Robotics, which recently partnered with Caliburger on its robotic kitchen assistant, Graze Mowing, which is developing an autonomous lawn mower for commercial landscapers, and Piestro, a robotic pizza shop. You can listen to that interview below, starting at the 5:30 mark. ![]() She also discussed the product roadmap for Future Acres. She discussed her love for agriculture, the challenges farmers face today, and how automation can help. Suma Reddy, CEO of Future Acres, recently was a guest on The Robot Report Podcast. Tevel won a 2021 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award, produced by our sister publication Robotics Business Review, for its tethered drone that uses vision and an attached robotic arm and gripper to pick ripe fruit. Some of Abundant’s competitors include FFRobotics (Israel), Ripe Robotics (Australia) and Tevel (Israel). It raised a $2 million Seed round from SRI Ventures in 2016. It raised a total of $12 million since it was founded, but its $10 million Series A closed back in May 2017. Abundant said its IP included a large body of vacuum manipulation patents, a patented sensory system to allow the vacuum to navigate obstructions, a patented vision system for identifying fruits and their quality, and several software patents for the machine’s automated operations.Ībundant also failed to raise another round of funding. In a liquidation memo, Abundant said it was unable to develop the market traction necessary to support its business during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Abundant put up for sale all of its IP on June 29, 2021. It also planned to broaden the type of fruit it picked in the future. Abundant said it was targeting a pick rate of 1.5 seconds for the commercialized version of the robot. The company claimed its robot could reach between 50-90% of apples on trees and pick an apple every two seconds. It then transferred the fruit into a bin. Future Acres is looking at integrating Abundant’s computer vision and vacuum-based end effector technology into Carry, which currently doesn’t have manipulation capabilities.Ībundant’s apple-harvesting robot combined computer vision and a vacuum end-effector to select and pick ripe apples. Carry is designed to transport up to 500 lbs of crops around a farm. ![]() Wavemaker portfolio company Future Acres is exploring how to leverage some of the IP to potentially enhance its Carry mobile robot. Wavemaker did not bring over any employees from Abundant Robotics. Abundant Robotics, an agrobotics startup that spun out off SRI International in 2016, was developing a robot to harvest apples before it shut down in June. Wavemaker Labs, a corporate venture studio and product development incubator, acquired the intellectual property (IP) from Abundant Robotics.
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