What's next for robotizing greenhouse growing? Plant lowering! Arugga AI Farming, the Israel-based start-up company known for bringing pollination robots to tomato greenhouse farming is about to launch its new solution: robotic plant-lowering.
"Following three years of hard work, we are proud to launch our first commercial plant lowering robots and further help growers automate their greenhouse operations", says Iddo Geltner, Arugga CEO. "Over the past few months, our first robot was successfully tested in partnership with the Lans greenhouse team in Dinteloord, Netherlands. We have reached efficiency and safety targets we had set for ourselves and are now working on delivering improved speed."
Erwin van der Lans is Head of Operations and one of the owners of the Lans greenhouse company, a member of Cooperation Harvest House U.A. He is keen to see the robots deployed: "Labour shortages combined with housing shortage for greenhouse workers is an acute problem in the Netherlands, and for us, those robotic solutions will be critical to remain competitive. I have been impressed by the performances of Arugga's lowering robot and I am keen to start deploying them across our greenhouses supported by Harvest House".
Erwin van der Lans (left) and Iddo Geltner (right)
Global expansion
Arugga has already signed several agreements with tomato growers worldwide to deploy first units in January. Iddo adds: "Beyond lowering tomato or cucumber plants, our robot offers additional monitoring capabilities. For example, the plant-lowering robot can weigh every plant, and the cameras used to detect the hooks can also provide important data for every pant. Growers will need between 2 robots to cover 1 full hectare.".
Eytan Heller, VP Business Development at Arugga also points out that: "We are expanding our footprint in greenhouses after successfully deploying our pollination robots in five countries and demonstrating increased yield versus bumble bees or manual pollination in every geography. The launch of our plant-lowering robots coincides with the launch of our second generation of pollination robots called Polly+, which shows significant speed improvements, with only 1 to 2 robots needed to pollinate 1 hectare".
For more information:
Arugga
[email protected]
www.arugga.com