InsightTRAC Rover wins Ag Robot of the Year award 2023
The InsightTRAC Rover is the winner of the Ag Robot Of The Year award. This autonomous rover removes Navel Orangeworm infested nuts, so-called mummies, from almond orchards.
Hitting the target
The 5 finalists were judged by each jury member individually according to these 5 criteria:- Originality/technical breakthrough
- Feasibility/market readiness
- Potential to impact farmer’s life
- Ease of farmer uptake, and
- Sustainability
InsightTRAC Rover looks like a turnkey solution that farmers can easily adopt without having to change their farming practiceA motivation expressed by the jury is that ‘the rover is not only performing its task in new and more sustainable way. It also looks like a turnkey solution that farmers can easily adopt without having to change their farming practice’.
Innovative solution for a specific market sector
Another motivation says ‘the InsightTRAC robot is an innovative solution for a specific market sector. It is a different type of robot to many on the market showing how robot design is evolving to solve the challenges growers are facing around the world. It is interesting to see how single job robots are developing to work alongside multi-functional tool carrying robots. The future of robots providing practical solutions across agriculture is incredibly exciting.’
From concepts to market ready solutions
In 2020 and 2021, Future Farming and World FIRA annually elected the Best Field Robot Concept. This was primarily to encourage start-ups and pioneers who are passionate about developing new robots. Start-ups developing a fully autonomous robot or innovative autonomous system for agriculture were to apply for the FIRA Start-Up pitch sessions, to be held during World FIRA 2023. As a winner, the InsightTRAC Rover will be featured as the main image in the promotion of the World FIRA of 2024, Future Farming will offer a canvas of their rover with the Ag Robot of the Year award logo and JoJo’s Vineyard (run by jury member Ian Beecher-Jones) from the UK is offering a bottle of their best wine to the winners.Meet the judges
Gerrit Kurstjens
Gerrit Kurstjens is a pioneering farmer who has already clocked up 40,000 ha of autonomous operations with tractors on 13,000 ha of cropping area at Beefwood Farms, Moree in New South Wales, Australia.
Chuck Baresich
Chuck Baresich is the general manager of Haggerty Creek, the Ontario agribusiness and robotic equipment dealer and a driving force behind a local robotics research project.
Walter Kihm
Walter Kihm is the 8th generation of farmers in his family. He has been working on his family farm in France at Rochefort sur la côte since 2017. The farm consists of 700 ha. Since 2018 they produce organic crops such as chickpeas, wheat, sunflowers and red peas. In 2016 they started a farm in Ukraine with 21 000 ha of conventional farming.
Laurent de Buyer
Laurent lives in Paris 14ème. His current position is AXEMA Générale Manager since June 2022. Laurent has always worked in agricultural engineering from the start of his career. Over the past decades, he has worked as a general manager at French manufacturers such as Gregoire (tillage implements), Lucas G (feed mixers), Tecnoma EXEL Group (sprayers) and Manip M-Extend Group (loaders).
Ian Beecher-Jones
Ian Beecher-Jones has been involved with precision agriculture for the last 20 years, providing consultancy services for multi-national manufacturers around the world. Ian is also a co-owner of JoJo’s Vineyard a 2,2 ha vineyard in South Oxfordshire. The vineyard has recently won an Innovate UK project to explore the opportunities for the digitisation of vineyards using robots, drones and a range of sensing and scanning tools.
Steve Pitstick
Steve farms with his son. They grow corn and soybeans on about 5000 acres in IL near Chicago. Steve is also the current Chairman of the IL Soybean Association. He has consulted on many agtech matters over the last 10 years and has a close friendship with an individual that is in the autonomous startup space.
Frederico Logemann
Frederico is head of innovation & strategy at SLC since 2006. SLC is a farm in Brazil for research, development, and education. Frederico was responsible for establishing the company´s innovation department, which is comprised today of an entrepreneurship program, a startup connection program, and SLC Ventures, a venture capital arm. Frederico is also a member of the Board at Instituto Caldeira, an innovation hub for Rio Grande do Sul state.
Michael Nichols
Michael Nichols runs a mixed farming business in sisters creek, Tasmania. They grow a variety of crops like potatoes, onions, poppies, pyrethrum, wheat, barley, mustard and corn. Additionally, they run a few beef cattle on the side. In 2021 his farm won the national Australian government innovation in agriculture land management award.
Maxence Guillaumot
Maxence Guillaumot comes from a French arable farming family. After starting his career in the development of agricultural tractors, he joined an agricultural robotic company, as a robotics advisor. Now, he helps AgTech companies and growers to build the agriculture of tomorrow, as a product and market analyst. He also writes and films about robots for Future Farming.
Bram Veldhuisen
Bram is a researcher in precision agriculture and robotics at Wageningen University & Research (WUR). Besides that, he is closely involved with Farm of the Future, a Dutch initiative in which WUR and Dutch farmers of the future are working together on feasible solutions to the challenges faced by agriculture in the Netherlands.
René Koerhuis
René Koerhuis graduated from Wageningen University & Research in 1998. He started out his career as a ‘Precision Farming Specialist’ at a well-known machine manufacturer. Following that, he fulfilled several product management and marketing roles for different companies after which he started his own company early 2013. He currently is an editor for several titles and websites and specialises in precision agriculture and robotics.
Mick Roberts
Mick Roberts is an agricultural journalist specialising in spray application technology, drones and precision farming. He edits Pro Operator magazine as well as www.eioperator.com a spraying information and training website.
Geert Hekkert
Geert Hekkert has been editor-in-chief of Future Farming since 2019. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of Boerderij, the largest independent magazine for farmers in the Netherlands. He also founded the National Fieldlab for Precision Farming (NPPL) project in 2017. In this project, farmers work closely with researchers at Wageningen University to test new technology in practice.
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