The Latest Partnerships in Automated Agricultural Operations

Burro and Adpet Ag (Adept) are forming a pioneering partnership, combining the former company’s light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology, machine vision, and AI-enhanced mobile agricultural robotic machinery with Adept’s automation, irrigation, and control solutions for controlled-environment (CE) agriculture. The duo aims to alleviate labor shortage woes and ease agricultural workflows to improve productivity. A leading egg producer and supplier, Bird Bros Ltd (Bird Bros), is also turning to automated machinery to enhance and expand its Sunny Farm Bedfordshire headquarters.

The 12-horsepower Grande is robust with a 5,000 lb towing payload and 18×8.5-10 R4 tires for stability and traction on mud, dirt, gravel, and concrete. Image used courtesy of Burro

First-of-its-Kind Autonomous Technology

Burro is touted as a first-of-its-kind fully autonomous mobile collaborative robot designed to improve workforce productivity in CE settings. The robust bot boasts multi-sensor technology, an intuitive touch screen for human-guided operation, integrated safety features, a high-precision global position system (GPS), and machine learning.

Verde is a greenhouse bot that, like Burro, has a towing payload of 2,000 lbs, a carrying capacity of 500 lbs, 5.2 horsepower, and a range of 8 to 10 miles. Burro’s largest and most heavy-duty bot is the Grande, which has a 5,000 lb. towing payload and a carrying capacity of 1,000 lbs. The 12-horsepower bot features 360-degree LiDAR technology, enhancing perception capabilities across 40 meters.

Integrated GPS technology, machine vision, and a data collection capacity of up to 1 terabyte per hour enable Grande to stop before an obstruction, avoid obstacles, and plan paths with greater precision. Grande also features vision-based crop row scouting and a remotely accessible online dashboard to monitor bot location and status.

An overview of the web-based mission management tool, Atlas, and autonomous mobile robot, Grande. Video used courtesy of Burro

Burro’s automated mobile robots transform agricultural operations by managing tedious and time-consuming transport duties, freeing personnel to focus on critical tasks such as quality control and order fulfillment. This strategy addresses worker shortages, reduces reliance on human labor, and offers an economical substitute to traditional machinery, lowering operating costs. Burro’s robots improve overall productivity and promote wiser resource allocation on farms by streamlining workflows, enhancing resource management, and capturing relevant data.

Together, Burro and Adept seek to evolve the landscape of agricultural operations, fostering greater productivity while assisting and upskilling the grower workforce. Burro’s machinery will permeate through Adept’s comprehensive grower network, expanding its market reach and gradually evolving the landscape of farming operations.

Bird Bros

In other news, leading egg producer Bird Bros announced its investment of £1 million to optimize its operations by incorporating automated machinery and equipment. Like the Burro-Adept partnership, incorporating automated machinery amidst farming operations is intended to cut operational costs, enhance safe working conditions, reduce labor, and boost productivity.

The improvements include an Endoline Robotics palletizer to increase efficiency and accuracy, a MOBA MR12 case packer to expedite egg packing, and a Unifortes pallet washer to enhance energy and water conservation. This solution will help to reduce operational expenses by eliminating waste and utilizing renewable power from over 800 kW of solar panels.

This investment supports Bird Bros' Vision 2028 goal of transitioning away from caged bird egg production, demonstrating the company's dedication to innovation and sustainability. Bird Bros is presenting itself as a progressive leader in the egg industry by integrating innovative robotics while also tackling labor concerns, lowering environmental impact, and planning for an environmentally conscious future in agriculture.

Featured image used courtesy of Burro