Written by Charlotte Cunningham
British agritech start-up, Small Robot Company, has announced the launch of its first commercial robot – ‘Tom’. Charlotte Cunningham reports. The ‘Tom’ monitoring robot has now been delivered to commercial specification and is entering service on UK farms. Customers so far include the Lockerley Estate, where robots are a key part of its regenerative farming strategy, as well as the Waitrose & Partners and the National Trust. SRC’s first service using Tom will be per plant weeding. This is now in field trials, with Tom scanning first arable crops to detect weeds, and robot weeding prototype ‘Dick’ then zapping individual weeds with electrical ‘lightning strikes’, using no chemicals. On-farm pilots of the service will commence this autumn. With up to 95% of chemicals wasted in the current farming system, this new non-chemical weeding technology will be significantly more nature-friendly and better for biodiversity, claims SRC. In future, Tom will also gather data from multiple sources, such as sensors and microphones for birdsong and pollinators, to assess soil health and biodiversity. Manufactured in Northumberland by Tharsus, Tom will also be going into 5G trials in Dorset in the autumn in the £8 million 5G RuralDorset project. World-first milestone In a world-first,…
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