When Brandon Contino and co-founder Dan Chi were developing Four Growers' produce-harvesting robots, they practically lived in a greenhouse for an entire year. They coded at a small desk tucked in the back corner and discovered that fertilizer bags can be comfortable beds.
"We started just running everything off a laptop, and I would be there in the row coding. [Chi] would be making changes mechanically," Contino, now CEO, told TechCrunch. "We'd run it then we'd make code changes, we'd redevelop, we'd go back in and run it again. So, it was a very fun time just living at the farm."
The result was Four Growers, which builds robots designed to autonomously harvest plants in greenhouses. The robots are programmed to identify produce at the right level of ripeness — which varies depending on a farmer's needs — by using multiple stereo cameras to see the crops and help maneuver the robot's arms around nonripe fruit on the vine. The tech currently works with tomatoes and will be commercially available to harvest other crops like cucumbers shortly, Contino said.
Contino's path to building agtech robotics wasn't a fluid one. He entered college interested in neural prosthetics. He later pivoted to water sensors and water scarcity after realizing he didn't want to end up with a career working on cyborgs, he said. Water scarcity led him to farms, but after talking to farmers, he realized robotics could help farmers in a bigger way.
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