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Briefing
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- See and Spray – Robotics startup Blue River Technology developed robot that uses computer vision to identify and precisely spray herbicide on weeds growing among cotton plants and specialty vegetables, while also able to detect and fertilize crops
- Robot Features – Include custom-designed nozzles, multi-camera arrays with front and rear-facing sensors, and dedicated NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs), powering computer vision and deep learning in technology
- Benefits – Eliminates 80% of chemicals normally sprayed on crops, reduces herbicide spending by 90%, and saves on labor costs
- Acquisition – Farm equipment maker John Deere acquired Blue River Technology for $305 million in September 2017
- Next Steps – Target spraying at least 98% of weeds, leaving at least 95% of cotton crop untouched, increase speed of spraying to six to eight miles per hour from current four, and create mobile app for controlling machine
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Accelerator
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Sector
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Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing, Information Technology
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Organization
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Blue River Technology, Deere & Co.
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Source
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Sennaar, K., "AI in agriculture – present applications and impact",
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Grassi, M., "How Blue River’s See & Spray technology could change agriculture forever",
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Burwood-Taylor, L., "Breaking: John Deere acquires ‘See & Spray’ robotics startup Blue River Technology for $305m",
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Vincent, J., "John Deere is buying an AI startup to help teach its tractors how to farm",
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Vogt, W., "Super-targeted sprayer getting closer to market",
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Graham, K., "John Deere advancing machine learning in agriculture sector",
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AcceleratingBiz analysis
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Original Publication Date
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November 16, 2017
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