Small Robot Company launches Tom V4: Next generation monitoring robot

Small Robot Co (SRC), a British agritech start-up for sustainable farming, has announced the launch of its next generation Tom v4 monitoring robots. This is a major milestone: commercialisation to both farmers and corporates. This comes just five years to the day from SRC’s initial unveiling at Agri-TechE REAP 2017.

Tomv4 is rolling out onto 20 farms in November to deliver SRC’s first commercial services for Per Plant Farming. Farmer services are fully subscribed for 2022, with 2023 selling out fast. Services will roll out to a total of around 50 farms throughout the coming year, with additional farm services in Suffolk and Shropshire. A further 100 farmers have signed EOIs for 50,000+ hectares potential future service. Farmers can try out the service on as little as 20ha, without a costly machinery outlay.

Meanwhile, pending corporate customer trials include nutrient company Mosaic (NYSE: MOS),, world-leading research centre James Hutton Institute and leading fresh produce company G’s Growers. Five corporate trials are pending for 2022-2023, with a further seven in negotiation.

Sam Watson Jones, co-founder and President, Small Robot Company, comments, ″Per Plant Farming will be the most important step forward for farming since the Green Revolution. Our Tom V4 is potentially a key piece of the puzzle to help accelerate this, and commercialisation is a significant milestone. Returning to REAP, it’s breathtaking to look back on the progress we’ve made in only five years.″

Dr Belinda Clarke, Director, Agri-TechE, comments: ″The Small Robot Company was profiled in the REAP Start-Up Showcase 5 years ago and it has gone from strength to strength. It has worked closely with farmers to ensure the technology addresses a real-world challenge and it has received an enthusiastic response from the industry.″

Commercial trials in corporate Agri-science

Tom V4’s Per Plant data has huge potential for the Corporate Agri-science industry. Tom’s capabilities including precisely geolocated per plant data, precise plant counts, and extremely high resolution plant images, with the opportunity for every field to become a trial plot. . Tom V4 delivers a ground sample distance of 0.28mm per pixel, among the highest resolution of any crop-scanning technology. This gives Tom the capability to see individual water droplets on leaves and early signs of disease outbreak.

Kim Nicholson, VP AgTech and Innovation, Strategy and Growth, The Mosaic Company comments,  "We're really excited about technologies like Small Robot Company. That type of precision and really directed application is probably not possible with our current equipment and technologies today, so exploring technologies like Small Robot Company gives us new ways to tackle that very big problem of how we continue to refine nutrient delivery. We're really hopeful that we can find a way to use the technology to understand when crops are most nutrient deficient, and also help us with very strategically and targeted applications of nutrients, so we really see that as the promise."

Steve Maclaren, Chief Operations Officer, The National Robotarium Heriot-Watt University / University of Edinburgh /James Hutton Institute comments, ″The National Robotarium is a global centre for the advancement of Robotics and AI, based at Heriot-Watt University’s Edinburgh campus in partnership with The University of Edinburgh. Using our unique synergy of science and engineering, we work with industry partners to co-design and develop solutions to global challenges through the use of robotics, data, and smart technology. We are passionate about the use of robotics and automated systems to help humans do things better. We’re excited to facilitate and support the deployment of the new Tomv4 robot at the James Hutton Institute, where their experts in agriculture and technology will test its capabilities to make the future of crop management and farming more sustainable, efficient and productive.″

New modular architecture

Tom v4 is also a major technical advancement: Tom’s new modular design is also the basis for Dick and Harry. SRC’s new modular robot architecture enables its robots to share 80% of the hardware, 90% of the electronics and all of the deployed software. The sharing of hardware and deployed software is to achieve the ultimate aim of improving scalability, reducing development time and simplifying support challenges. This platform will allow SRC to scale internationally to cover much larger farms.

This also provides SRC  with a configurable platform to deploy multiple technologies and applications. Examples such as non-chemical weeding and precision spraying are being progressed in trials.

Major Milestone: Commercial Per Plant Services for Farmers

The first Per Plant services from the Tom V4 monitoring robot will optimise farmers’ existing sprayer equipment to reduce costs and inputs, by treating only the problem areas. This is anticipated to cut herbicide applications by around 77%, based on 2021-2022 field trials, and fertiliser by an estimated 15%. The potential is for far greater savings.

• The service comprises three scans targeting:
  

• Winter wheat crop count and Per Plant visualisation

• Weed detection, geolocation and per plant imagery
  

• Glyphosate treatment sprayer export: green on brown map for targeted glyphosate application
  

• Herbicide treatment sprayer export: variable rate nitrogen application maps using plant counts and biomass assessments
  

• Fertiliser treatment sprayer export: variable rate nitrogen application maps using plant counts and biomass assessments
  

Tom V4 scans the crop to a level of detail that identifies individual plants, gathering data on plant and weed distribution to determine the optimum treatment path. This information is used to inform variable rate fertiliser applications and to spot-apply herbicides through nozzle control and sectional control sprays.

This pioneering approach, delivering applications by exception, was developed in partnership with Tuckwells, one of the UK’s leading John Deere dealerships, which has a focus on industry-leading design and technology. The sprayer integration capability was demoed for the first time at Groundswell, the leading regenerative agriculture event.

David Miller, Soil Farmer of the Year and Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (AHDB) Strategic Cereal Farm for the south, one of the first UK farms to use SRC’s commercial services, says: ″The sprayer integration is the main factor that convinced me to sign up. Our sprayer has GPS shut-off capabilities, so when spraying the field, the robot can tell the sprayer where the weeds are and where it needs to spot spray, so that we can adopt a more targeted approach in what weeds we are trying to control. Environmental considerations are particularly important to us here.″

James Vining, Business Develoipment Manager, Small Robot Company, comments, ″"What's really key for farmers is that we are delivering value from year one. The fact that we can integrate with, and optimise, existing machinery is extremely compelling. Our business model has made the service accessible to farmers with as little as 20ha, without a costly machinery outlay. This means farmers can begin the transition to Per Plant Farming with minimum inconvenience: it's a real win win."

Future services currently in research and development include grassweed mapping, with out of row crop detection as the first stage; robotic non-chemical weeding; disease identification and fungicide treatment sprayer export; and soil sampling and insights. SRC will take plant density information, augmenting this with other metrics, such as biomass assessment, soil insights, physiology, tiller count, growth stage and weather, to support decisions on when and how much fertiliser to apply, and exactly where it’s needed, optimising plant nutrition. Farmers in its 2021-2022 trials believe significant value will come from having the confidence not to spray prophylactically.

″With input costs on the rise, farmers are increasingly under pressure. Up to 90% of inputs are wasted. This is not economically or environmentally viable. Fertiliser alone is a major contributor to agricultural emissions,″ comments Sam Watson Jones, President and co-founder, Small Robot Company. ″Robotics gives huge scope to close the gap: delivering applications by exception. Precision monitoring alone can provide immediate value, optimising existing sprayers for herbicide and fertilizer applications. But we believe that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the potential for what per-plant farming can deliver, both in input-cost savings and yield enhancement.″

Industry response

Andrew Hoad, Partner & Head of Waitrose’s Leckford Estate, one of the first UK farms to sign up for SRC’s robotic services, commented: ″This technology could be truly groundbreaking and has the potential to shape how we farm in the future. By helping us be more precise and targeted in controlling weeds and managing pests, this next generation of farming robots could in turn help us protect biodiversity on our land and preserve the natural environment for future generations.″ The Leckford Estate was one of the first three farms to trial the technology in the 2021-2022 season, and is now signed up to the services for the 2022-2023 season. Andrew is also a member of SRC’s farmer advisory board.

Tom Jewers, farmer and contractor in Suffolk signed up to the services for the 2022-2023 season, comments: "We desperately need to develop ways to reduce the need for expensive plant protection products and artificial fertilisers. The ability to treat only the plants that actually need it is game-changing.″ Tom is also on the SRC farmer advisory board, taking a lead in co-designing SRC’s robotic service.

Will Evans, forthcoming Oxford Farming Conference co-Chair signed up to the 2023-2024 season in Shropshire, and member of the SRC ‘100 Club’ wider advisory group, commented: ″Small Robot Company's vision for Per Plant Farming encapsulates the future of agriculture - and the scale of opportunity is huge. We're on the cusp of tremendous change. SRC's tech is front and centre of the fourth agricultural revolution. The savings that can be made with the Tom robot alone are impressive: and that’s just the first step. Robotic action will be a groundbreaking. This is game-changing."

Technical information

Tom V4 can successfully identify all the wheat plants, determining precise plant counts, as well as broadleaf weeds. Tom accurately geolocates and analyses data on every plant in the field with 6m camera coverage, and 8 x 6 megapixel cameras, gathering 15,000 images from its cameras, or 40Gb of per plant intelligence, for every hectare.

Four wheel drive, Tom has a survey speed of 2.2ha/hr, and 1.5 m/s forward speed. With a weight of only 350.6 kg, Tom V4 has a static ground pressure of <31kPa - equivalent to less than a third of a human foot. Tom V4’s navigation system uses a Swiftnav GPS system with 2 GNSS receivers to provide RTK position with a 1cm accuracy. Tom uses 4 (1.56 kwh) rechargeable batteries and has data storage capacity of 4TB (removable drive), and a static ground pressure of <31kPa. Other technical information includes:

• Track width: 1.04m

• Wheelbase : 0.95m

• Robot length: 1.55m

• Robot width: 1.54m

• Robot height: 1.3m

• Boom deployed width: 5.56m

• Turning radius: 0.74m/2.43ft.