April 2, 2019

Augean Robotics has raised $1.5 million through a Seed round led by ffVC, and including S2G Ventures, Radicle Growth, and other unnamed participants.

As part of the investment, Adam Plotkin from ffVC, and Kirk Haney from Radicle Growth with join Augean’s board.

Founded in Philadelphia in 2017 by Charlie Anderson, Augean is addressing the labor shortages encountered in the ag industry by providing robotic solutions through Burro, its autonomous platform designed to handle tedious production tasks.

As wages continue to rise and the workforce continues to shrink, Augean leverages collaborative, data-acquisitive robots deployed to work alongside humans to lift productivity by as much as 30 percent.

“Eighty four percent of the U.S. crop workforce tends to largely non-mechanized fruit, vegetable, and nursery production, but rising wages and a shrinking workforce are driving growers of these specialty crops to turn to robots to reduce labor needs and costs,” said Charlie Andersen, CEO and founder of Augean Robotics.

Using computer vision and AI to navigate farms, Burros are working alongside humans, acting as conveyors and automated in-field transport, in the production of table grapes, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, nursery plants, and other hand-harvested crops, thus enabling humans to focus on higher-value tasks.

“We really like companies in the autonomous and robotics sector that are built on an innovative tech stack that can be used to solve specific vertical, valuable and mission-critical business problems right now,” said Adam J. Plotkin, partner at ff Venture Capital. “Augean Robotics, by addressing the acute labor problems facing growers, fits closely within our thesis, and we are looking forward to working together.”

The agricultural robotics market is expected to see rapid growth over the coming five years, according to Market Research Engine. Expectations are for a market value of $16.8 billion by 2020, and $75 billion by 2025.

Indeed, signs of greater adoption are quickly cropping up. At the end of March, T&G Global announced that after four years of working with U.S.-based Abundant Robotics, the company is conducting the world’s first robotic apple harvest.

“Apple-picking is tough physical work and it’s seasonal,” said  Peter Landon-Lane, chief operating officer, T&G Global. “Robotic technology complements the work our people do with its ability to pick a large proportion of the fruit, much of it at the upper levels of the trees, reducing the physical demands of the work for our people as well as boosting productivity.”

“Automation enables us to continue to scale to meet increasing global demand for food, in the face of current and future labour market challenges.”

Field work robotic companies are also beginning to gain confidence from agtech investors in their technologies and their potential for disruption.

In May 2017, GV led a $10 million Series A that included BayWa AG, and Tellus Partners for Hayward, California-based Abundant Robotics, an automated robotic solutions provider that is developing apple-picking robots.

That same month, Boston, Massachusetts-based American Robotics announced it had raised $1.1 million through an initial seed round led by angel investors and including Brain Robotics Capital LLC – a fund that backs science-based companies in the AI, robotics, and IoT sectors.

In November 2018, Yamaha Motor Co. made an $8 million investment in another New Zealand-based ag robotics and automation startup, Robotics Plus. This was the second investment by Yamaha in the business that year, after a partnership agreement and investment of US$2 million were announced in March, bringing the total investment for the year to $10 million.

More recently, last month Omnivore Partners, Blume Ventures, and BEENEXT led a $2 million Seed Round for Indian agtech and robotics platform TartanSense.

-Lynda Kiernan