Are strawberries The most famous Berry in the United States The same for both consumers and farmers. They are also some extreme pesticide -related fruits and are permanently above the Environmental Working Group The “dirty dozen” list Of the most contaminated output.
San Louis Obespo, based in California TRIK ROBOTES It thinks this can help strawberries reduce chemical use with UV light and robot.
Startup created a raft of robots that uses UV-C lights, a form of ultra-violet light that is largely blocked by the Earth environment, to damage the bacteria and the pest population. The tractor -shaped independent robot can treat up to 100 acres and use a vacuum prepared to suck the bug remains without hurting the crops.
The company operates its robot as a service overnight, on the contrary, it is contrary to selling them directly to farmers, because, the model seemed right to start tracking fast, the truck co -founder and CEO, Adam Stage, told Tech Crunch.
“We worked a lot to understand the correct way of launching technology with farmers and did the right business model,” said the stnger. “We have found that many farmers pay for control of insect diseases as a service, so they come to a company and spray. And what we are doing is just to change as a service model.”
While Steter said that the company has focused a lot on the wishes of the farmers, but it was not always this way. In fact, Tryk was not focused on agriculture.
The Stage launched the company in 2017 after the completion of a PhD in robotics. The company was initially focused on 3D printed robots for Swat teams. In 2020, the stage decided to leave the area in the area, which would have a greater impact and would start focusing on agriculture.
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“I really just wanted to answer this question, if you wanted to die tomorrow, would you be happy with what you got in your life?” Stagger said. “I was so, okay, I really need to do something that can help many people feel the importance of myself. I stumbled into agriculture in this journey, (and felt) this is the place where we can only impress a lot of people about everyone.”
Staggler reached the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to see if there was a technology on which he is working on which he can help to trade, knowing that many great technology never leaves the lab.
He became associated with the USDA program that brings people like stiggers and scientists, who have not yet commercialized their work. This access linked it to UV light technology that became the basis of Train’s robotics.
“We have two robots that we made in our garage over SUV,” said Stiger, about his and his co -founder Vishnu Somsandram. “We had two contacts that the USDA helped us to build with the farmers who were willing to give us only a small piece of land in 2021, and it was really the start of the company when the company was launched. It was a cross -container of the airbut surfing for eight months, where we were traveling with two robots.”
Now the company, which also considers Ryan Berard as its third co -founder, works with four major strawberries producers, has deployed nine robots, and there are three more robots along the way.
TRIC Robotics recently collected a round of $ 5.5 million seeds headed by Version One Ventures, in addition to Garage Capital, Todte and Rahul Capital, and other investment firms in the Lucas Venture Group.
The company intends to put this money towards continuing its independent robot fleet, and eventually wants to go to other types of crops.
“I think for (agriculture) tech, really, really bright future, is going to happen,” said Stiger.