Ag robotics special: Four Growers tomato picking robots and FIRA update

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This week’s episode focuses heavily on the agricultural robotics industry. Cohost Mike Oitzman shares his insights from FIRA USA ag-robotics event in Salinas CA. At FIRA, the leading ag robotics companies demonstrated their solutions in live demos where the vehicles operated in real fields with real plants.

For our featured interview this week, we sit down with Brandon Contino, CEO and co-founder of Four Growers, a startup building robots to harvest foods grown in greenhouses. Brandon talks about the technical and business challenges related to the robot and how focusing on greenhouses helps product evolution.

Episode timeline

13:43     FIRA USA update with Mike Oitzman

27:40     Interview with Brandon Contino

News of the week

• Agility Robotics announces new “Robofab” 75K sq ft manufacturing facility in Corvalis OR.
  • The facility will eventually produce over 10,000 robots per year
  • Customers who are participating in the Agility Partner Program (APP) can expect delivery of the first Digits in 2024, with general market availability in 2025.
• TRI is using Generative AI to teach robots
  • TRI building Large Behavior Models – claiming it’ll be similar to LLMs and what LLMs have done for conversational AI
  • Human teaches the robots skills through teleoperation; TRI’s AI policy learns in the background and can have the skill down in a matter of hours
  • Over 60 skills learned so far, they’re hoping to have 1000 skills learned by the end of next year; Some of these skills include pouring liquids, using tools and manipulating deformable objects.