December 2019 - 7

HARVESTER
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
But a release could be coming
sooner than previously expected. In
late summer, AFT got a $7.5 million
boost from new partners, including
the investment arm of Yamaha
Motor, Kubota, Catapult Ventures
and Impact Venture Capital. Nolan
Paul, partner and global agtech
lead for Yamaha Motor Ventures
& Laboratory Silicon Valley, said
Yamaha's investment group has an
interest in specialty crop technologies.
Yamaha and Kubota's expertise lies in
large-scale manufacturing. Yamaha
has a robotics group and is interested
in diversifying
its business,
which has
traditionally
been
focused on
motorsports.
Its other
investments
to date have
included
automated
apple picker
Abundant Robotics and New Zealandbased
RoboticsPlus, Paul said.
Yamaha's interest in specialty crop
NOLAN PAUL
technology is based on the premise
of fruits and vegetables becoming
Advanced Farm Technologies' T-6 robotic strawberry harvester. Photo: Advanced Farm Technologies
more popular with consumers,
and resources of all kinds - labor,
farmland, food - becoming more
scarce, Paul said. Labor shortages
sometimes result in acres of fruit
going unpicked, and strawberry
production, in particular, is
vulnerable to labor problems.
" If you've ever been out to try to
pick strawberries, it's got to be the
hardest job in the world, " Paul said.
" You're out there out all day, and
you're bent over. You're running back
and forth. "
In part to make the job less
strenuous for an aging farm labor
workforce, some growers have
moved strawberry plantings onto
elevated ridges, or " tabletops. " And
most robotics solutions are aimed
tabletops or elevated beds.
But Paul said Yamaha invested in
AFT in part because " they're one of
the few companies trying to solve
the problem in-soil as opposed to
tabletop systems out of the soil. "
" Right now, in the U.S. the acreage
for in-soil is, I would say, 99.9% of
acreage, " he said. " That's where the
pain is. The U.S. may in time move to
more tabletop (strawberry growing),
but it's more expensive; it requires
more talent. The sophistication of how
to grow in a tabletop environment -
that talent pool is lacking in the U.S. "
Yamaha's other attraction to AFT,
Paul said, is that tight-knit group
already has completed one other
robotics project. Greenbotics - a
startup with automation for cleaning
industrial-sized solar panels - was
purchased by SunPower in 2013.
Robotics development - like strawberry
picking and commercial strawberry
growing - is challenging work.
" We're just trying to be humble
about how hard it is to be a grower, "
Cobb said. " It's certainly hard to
be building robotic equipment and
when you put those hands together,
it's even harder all around. We're
trying to be humble about the
problems. You continuously learn
and improve. " VGN
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VGN | DECEMBER 2019 | 7

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December 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of December 2019