Earth Automations

European farmers are facing challenges from all sides. Tractors overturn, cause fatal accidents, pricing pressures from large supermarket chains create dependencies on government subsidies, work is repetitive even with the adoption of automated tractor parts, and new technologies are not being adopted due to high initial investment costs. EarthAutomations has a solution to combat each of these challenges and help Europe’s agricultural companies. Their multifunctional agribot DOOD autonomously carries out routine tasks and maintains agricultural fields. DOOD safely performs a variety of operations while the operator remotely controls it or programmes the robot to automatically carry out tasks. With DOOD, costs for maintaining permanent fields reduce, worker safety increases, and the increase in efficiency provides the farmers with an added value of 600 – 1,400€ per hectare.

The hardware: DOOD is equipped with a three-point hitch and power take off (PTO). This crawling tractor uses sensors and cameras to interact with its environment, allowing it to make decisions autonomously. The robot is designed to work in orchards and vineyards, including but not limited to olive groves, citrus plants, fruits, and various types of nuts. DOOD is configured so that the standard agriculture tools already used by farmers can be attached, helping to ease its adoption into the sector. It is also quiet and consumes less fuel than other solutions on the market.

The software: Connected through a GSM/GPRS module, the software updates itself and is a great example of AI applied in agriculture. It can navigate autonomously thanks to Galileo positioning technologies. The vehicle computer processes the data and then moves along on a series of pre-calculated path points. This ensures that DOOD can carry out process evaluations with simultaneous verifications from Galileo data.

EarthAutomations first came up with the idea for DOOD after learning about the challenges faced by European agricultural companies. They wanted to apply robotics to agriculture so that farmers can increase their efficiency, spend less time driving tractors around the fields, and harness the newest technologies available in robotics and AI. The team is made up of experts in finance, mechanical engineering, AI, and economics. They have been developing DOOD since 2014 and have already made two prototypes of the robot. Plus, DOOD has a UBI patent and is pending European patent approval. They hope to be able to scale up their business to deliver DOOD to customers around the world.