Weeding robot for precision farming reducing herbicide usage by 95%

The overall vision of the Project is to prototype, pilot, and commercialise our cost-effective and environmentally friendly weeding robot, Asterix, for the global precision farming sector. Our light-weight, autonomous robot is the only solution on the market that successfully addresses weeding challenges while reducing herbicide usage by 95%. Asterix incorporates a patented, vision-based, ultra-high precision nozzle system. This is built on top of a state-or-the-art machine learning platform that is trained to differentiate the appearance of intertwined crops and their weeds. Asterix applies herbicide only to weeds, not crop or soil, enabling the use of novel, environmentally safe weeding agents in both conventional and organic agriculture. Asterix will avoid 186 million liters of herbicide usage in the global farming sector in the first 5 years after the Project. It will reduce the health and environmental impact of agricultural weeding operations and slash their cost by at least 550€ per hectare per year. We propose prototyping, validation, and market readiness activities. Our specific objectives include 1) Technology maturation (WP1) to optimise the function of Asterix’s subsystems and integrate them into a final prototype to pilot in real-life settings; 2) Piloting and validation (WP2) to show Asterix’s technical and economic performance, functionality, and user benefits via large-scale piloting in real-life operating settings; 3) Preparation to commercialise (WP3-6), enabling us to successfully bring Asterix to market and reach sales traction after Phase 2. Through the Asterix Project, we will significantly boost the growth of our company. By year 5 after project closure, we estimate to reach accumulated revenues of €88.2m, generate at least 40 full-time internal positions and 130 more in our value chain, and accumulate profits of €44.1m. This will be roughly equal to 31-times the total pre-market investment.