Farming is tough work, and it’s no stranger to disruptions. In recent times, the bodily demanding nature of the job has introduced on labor shortages and more and more extreme climate circumstances have compromised the efficacy of conventional outside farming. Indoor greenhouses have emerged in its place, however their perceived excessive price and specialised nature have stalled widespread adoption.
Farming know-how start-up Hippo Harvest is concentrated on altering that by enhancing the accessibility and scalability of managed surroundings agriculture (CEA). Led by a group of tech trade veterans, the corporate leverages superior plant science, machine studying and autonomous cellular robots (AMRs; Zebra Robotics Automation) to domesticate lettuce that may stand up to the challenges posed by droughts, floods and different excessive climate circumstances.
“My profession as much as Hippo Harvest had been know-how for know-how’s sake,” says Eitan Marder-Eppstein, CEO at Hippo Harvest. “At Hippo Harvest, I’ve had the chance to leverage know-how for actual impression.”
Hippo Harvest was established in 2019 to make meals techniques extra resilient in unsure circumstances. The corporate partnered with Zebra Robotics Automation to make greenhouse farming as cost-effective and scalable as outside farming.
Intrigued by the adaptability of warehouse automation, Marder-Eppstein appeared previous the standard imaginative and prescient of AMRs in a warehouse or manufacturing, seeing its potential software in agriculture. “We wished to construct one thing that gave us extra management and adaptability to dynamically harvest or deal with vegetation in a different way,” says Marder-Eppstein.
Somewhat than utilizing tractors like in conventional farming, Hippo Harvest makes use of Zebra’s Fetch AMRs. The cellular robots include customizable attachments and software program to water crops, present vitamins, transfer vegetation, carry out sensing and imaging duties, and even preserve the greenhouse clear by vacuuming.
“Zebra’s Fetch100 system is absolutely the workhorse of our farm,” says Ivonna Dumanyan, chief enterprise officer at Hippo Harvest. “It’s the platform on which all our capabilities are constructed.”
In comparison with standard farming, the implementation of superior applied sciences has lowered Hippo Harvest’s water consumption by 92%, and their technique of delivering particular nutrient doses straight to every plant has curbed fertilizer utilization by 55%.
Whereas many greenhouse farms rely on recirculating plumbing techniques, Hippo Harvest’s AMR system permits its greenhouses to function with out the necessity for intricate indoor plumbing set up and upkeep. Working on this managed indoor surroundings additionally drastically reduces the necessity for pesticides, resulting in the elimination of drift and a ready-to-eat product.
“The great thing about a progress system like Hippo Harvest is we are able to put it anyplace,” says Dumanyan. “We will feed extra folks with fewer sources, much less water and fewer area.”
The system helps develop extra produce nearer to the place it’s bought, enhancing shelf life and rising sustainability by decreasing time in transit.
Upkeep of the AMRs has additionally confirmed to be a lot more economical in comparison with the upkeep of conventional raft and conveyor techniques. Every gadget is easy to troubleshoot, swap and restore on a brief timeline.
“Using AMRs permits us to mitigate downtime in our system,” “It permits us to alter our minds to search out optimizations and enhancements in our methods of working and adapt accordingly.” – says Dumanyan
As well as, the AMRs assist Hippo Harvest gather information about vegetation and circumstances all through the greenhouse, which has efficiently accelerated the speed of studying that allows the corporate to outpace the trade’s customary pace of innovation.
The implementation of AMRs as a contemporary method to farming can be serving to handle the trade’s labor scarcity by using robots to do repetitive and ergonomically difficult duties whereas human operators deal with jobs that use their expertise to their full potential.
The system permits Hippo Harvest to program AMR tractors to work for as much as 20 hours a day, preserving the farm working effectively even when labor is scarce. Steady operation permits the system’s per unit space to supply about 30 instances extra produce than standard outside agriculture.
“I can’t let you know what number of plant scientists have advised us that this shouldn’t work, but it surely does,” says Dumanyan. “And it’s as a result of the AMRs have given us the flexibleness to suppose in a different way about the way forward for agriculture. The AMR system’s flexibility is unparalleled not solely in our bodily area however in our capabilities.”