The Small Robot Company to transform agriculture

Robots are set to transform UK agriculture, and a Hampshire company is leading the way.

As an industry, farming is changing – the impact of Brexit, climate change, food security, the recent pandemic, and the Ukraine War along with consumer demand for local provenance has raised questions about the future of farming methods. Traditionally labour intensive methods, with emphasis on huge fields and big machinery, are not proving sustainable.

“In 2016, we were the outliers, the people on the sidelines of agricultural technology. A lot of interest is now developing. The Robotics Show in France last December saw over 40 robot companies exhibiting. The focus to date has been on labour saving tasks like fruit picking, sowing and autonomous tractors. The next focus is on precision – which is where we come in,” says Sarra Mander CMO, Small Robot Company.

Discovering the sheer scale of reliance farmers were placing on subsidies, fourth generation farmer Sam Watson Jones explored the ideas of Professor Simon Blackmore at the National Centre for Precision Farming, Harper Adams University. Inspired by the concept of improving soil by replacing heavy tractors with smart, lightweight robots, Sam joined forces with entrepreneur and specialist in user centred design, Ben Scott-Robertson, to create a start up business.

With Ben living in Gosport, and having a pre-existing relationship with Southampton University’s robotics unit, Hampshire was an automatic choice of business location. “We also get graduates from Bristol, Brunel and Reading Universities. There is great talent in the area,” commented Sarra. “We see robotics in agriculture as a way of creating jobs, freeing up farmers time, giving them more autonomy and providing a way to add value to crops and farming practices.”

As a result of the product development that has taken place, The Small Robot Company has created successive generations of robots named Tom, Dick, Harry and Wilma the AI. Tom is a monitoring robot, scanning fields to weeds and delivering world first per plant weeding and mapping with sub millimetre resolution. Tom downloads the data to Wilma, who analyses it and alerts the Dick robot to zap individual weeds using electricity rather than chemicals. Harry will and Tom will be able to use sensors to gather data to assess soil health and biodiversity. Other pilot applications being studied include a SlugBot using hyper-spectral cameras to detect slugs at night, before treating them with microdoses of nematodes.

The robots are now being trialled commercially within UK farms and will be active in 30 farms throughout 2022/23. The National Trust and John Lewis Partnership are among the farmers who have been working with the Small Robot Company over the past few years of development.

Farmers are definitely interested. There is a growing waiting list, with around 1,000 keen to be involved. At trade shows, The Small Robot Company is always a popular venue.

The Small Robot Company business method has proved crucial in gaining the confidence of farmers to take advantage of such new technology. Initial research revealed that farmers were concerned about the prospect of buying robots which couldn’t be updated, becoming quickly obsolescent, or breaking down and unable to be repaired. As a result, The Small Robot Company decided to opt for a service-style business.

“Our aim is to provide services which solve the farmers' fears. We will service the robots and add upgrades as they occur. We intend to set up hubs around the country, dealers who can provide the service. This makes it more cost effective for farmers,” explains Sarra.

To date, funding has mainly come from grants and crowdfunding campaigns, which have been consistently over funded. Now the company is seeking to take the next step in order to produce robots on a large-scale basis, as well as continue with product development. Sarra explains, “We are seeking more investment to take this company to the next level and fully commercialise robot production. This is a big step. We are now talking to investors, and look to complete that this year. We are the market leader, have technology that works and a big order book. No one else is doing this in the UK.”

As for the future, Sarra is extremely confident. “Using robots will benefit farms and consumers, reduce waste, improve yields, and is good for sustainability and biodiversity. Robots can be precise and efficient. “We have got some interesting projects on the way. We work with Innovate UK exploring research projects on fields, and have to decide which ones to develop into prototypes. We are talking about efficiency and precision, which will ultimately be so precise that it would be able to sow plants matching with specific needs such as nitrogen fixing plants next to plants that need nitrogen. The potential is frighteningly limitless.”