Inspired by his grandfather’s grandmother, who was Apple’s farmer in China, Charlie Wu came to the idea that he would apply technology to agriculture while studying computer science at a high agriculture school, Cornell University.
“I have to meet fruit professors who are the best in the world that they do,” Wu told Tech Crunch. “By talking to them, I realized the biggest forms of the nation mainly It is not estimated what their fields are actually increasing.
He got out of the cornell, became a bag fellow, and began to build in 2022 Archor RoboticsA startup that uses cameras and AI to help fruit farmers help handle their crops more clearly.
On Wednesday, Orchard Robotics announced that it had raised a $ 22 million series headed by Quet Capital and Shine Capital, and with the participation of the returning investors, including General Caitalist and vice versa.
Although the idea of ​​using computer vision for special crops is not new, Wu says that America’s largest farm farm still relys on making manual samples to make important decisions about the operations.
Since farmers inspect only a small percentage of their crops, how many healthy fruits they have on their garden or garden can be extremely wrong.
“If you do not know what you are growing in the field, you do not know how much chemicals are to be applied to. You do not know how many workers should hire it to be harvested. You do not know what you can actually sell and market.”
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Archaerd’s small camera is connected to tractors or farm vehicles, collecting ultra -high resolution images about fruit health as the operator goes into the field. Then these images are analyzed by AI for the size, color and health of fruit.
The data is then uploaded to Archaerd’s cloud -based software, which acts as a central record of decisions such as drizzle or trees that may require additional fertilizer, harvesting or thin.
Orchard is already in use in the country’s largest apple and grape farms, and recently Startups have begun offering their technology to Blueberry, Cherry, Almonds, Pistachio, Citis and Strawberry Farmers.
The company is not alone in the use of tractor -mounted cameras to take advantage of AI for special crop image analysis. Direct rivals of Archards include Bloomfield Robotics, which was last year Obtained For farm equipment manufacturers, as well as badge stage start -ups void robotics and Green Atlas.
Wu has acknowledged that the current market for fruits and vegetable data is only $ 1.5 billion, but he believes that the upcoming AI’s promotion will allow technology to make independent decisions, and will expand the offer of Archaerd products.
He hopes that Archard’s evolution is from the safety of a mirror of flock, which is now the beginning of public safety $ 7.5 billion, which has spread to a extent from collecting license plate information over the past eight years, including gunshot detection and video surveillance.
“Our desire is much more than just collecting data,” said Wu. “We want to collect data, then want to create an operating system above the data, and then eventually own all the workflows in the form, and it has the ability to increase our market a bit.”