Iron Ox, a startup founded in 2015, announced the opening of its farm run entirely by robots in San Carlos, near San Francisco. The autonomous indoor farm, which could be the first of its kind around the world, measures 8,000 square feet and is expected to produce about 26,000 vegetables a year initially.
Iron Ox created two robots with separate systems that can work independently or cohesively together.
The robotic arm can analyze the needs of each plant at the sub-millimeter scale while the mobile transport robot works like a self-driving car complete with sensors and computer vision.
Cloud software, which works like the brain of the robotic system, ensures that the arm and mobile transport worked flawlessly together when performing farming tasks.
The robots can cut time for repetitive tasks like harvesting, seeding, and plant inspection which would otherwise be done by humans for thousands of times a day. The startup, however, clarified that it does not intend to replace human farmers. Instead, the technology is aimed at providing labor support in areas where agricultural laborers and farming lands are scarce.
The startup also hopes to set up facilities near the cities, making fresh vegetables accessible for those who want to maintain a healthy urban lifestyle. To date, the robotic farm mainly produced leafy greens and herbs including romaine lettuce, butterhead lettuce, kale, basil, cilantro, and chives.
Iron Ox, which integrated plant science and robotics, has raised $6 million in seed funding. It was co-founded by Jon Binney and Brandon Alexander who previously worked at robotics lab Willow Garage and Google X.
The autonomous farm is designed to grow vegetables 30 times more than what traditional farms produced. Its hydroponic technology uses 90 percent less water which also makes it more sustainable and environmentally friendly than traditional farming.
While the robots are at work, a human team monitors the plants' health, crop growth, and food safety measures.
Iron Ox does not intend to sell their robots to future customers for the meantime, instead, the startup wants to sell its products to grocers and supermarkets. This would suggest that the startup would eventually seek more investors to create more robots to grow their produce.
Indeed, Yiannis Ampatzidis, an assistant professor of agricultural engineering at the University of Florida, told MIT Technology Review that small farm owners may not afford the robotic technology. This could result in big companies dominating the agricultural sector because they could only be the ones who could invest in the technology.
At the same time, the innovative technology created by Iron Ox is highly integrated into solving the agriculture sector's problem of labor shortage.
