Ecorobotix’s Smart Spraying System Agriculture Innovation

The agriculture industry is beyond vital. Aside from supporting livelihoods through employment for farmers, companies that operate within the industry provide the world’s basic need of consuming food.

Unfortunately, the extremely active world of agriculture requires the benefits of plant protection products like pesticides, herbicides, etc., to operate properly, harming several parties. According to the Pesticide Facts organization, 26-40% of the world’s crop production is lost annually due to weeds, pests, and diseases, making pesticides indispensable.

However, all the conventional product spraying not only harms the environment, with runoffs often polluting water and animals around the area, but it can also contaminate soils, beneficial insects, and non-target plants, which negatively impacts the crop production that at the same time needs plant protection products.

These conflicting impacts show a need for a balanced and more efficient plant protection products application, which is what Ecorobotix, an agriculture tech company founded in 2011 by Steve Tanner and Aurélien Demaurex, offers with its high-precision, cloud-computing smart sprayer named ARA.

Spraying Technology

The awfully negative impacts of pesticides, herbicides, and other plant protection products have long been recognized. The knowledge that these products are paramount in crop production but are also significantly harmful all at the same time has encouraged companies to work on ways to make a change, to create more efficient and sustainable agriculture practices. One of the few methods companies have developed and implemented is smart spraying technology.

Modern, innovative agricultural sprayers have started becoming more available on the market, whether in the form of handheld and backpack sprayers or tractor sprayers. Some of these cater to small applications like one’s garden or lawn, while others cater to big applications like farms or vineyards.

One company specializing in orchards and vineyards care is Smart Apply, with its Intelligent Spray Control System designed to spray with precision based on crop data analysis collected from cloud computing.

Most, if not all, of these smart-spraying technologies are designed to reduce the cost and waste companies face from the overuse of plant protection products and minimize the risks that come from over-application. Essentially, they’re made to eventually lead to optimal crop yields and sustainability in agricultural operations.

It is pretty clear that this agriculture technology is far from being a new solution to the plant protection product dilemma, at least not anymore. So, what does Ecorobotix bring to the table?

Smart Features and Cloud Services

Ecorobotix’s high-precision smart sprayer, ARA, is aimed at reducing the use of plant protection products by up to 95%, automatically lowering the cost companies need to spend on plant protection products, which we can imagine could be a boatful.

Ecorobotix achieves this by creating an innovative sprayer that can treat row crops, pastures, and lawns, 4 hectares an hour, with a plant-by-plant system. ARA sprays up to a precision of 6x6cm to reach its target plant, removing the risk of having protection products wasted on the ground. ARA’s nozzles are placed close to the ground with protective covers, which minimizes the spraying drift that usually causes waste and misuse of protection products.

Besides precision, ARA also offers versatility in its technology. The sprayer’s application of products can be set differently according to each crop’s versatile needs. For instance, selective herbicides, which are used to kill weeds, can be sprayed on weeds without the risk of spraying the crops as well. Insecticides and fungicides can be sprayed on crops without any risk of having them wasted on the ground and weeds.

ARA’s versatile ability comes from its cloud computing algorithm. ARA’s camera takes HD field images to detect and treat individual crops, which are also sent onto a server to be analyzed. Companies can also log onto their account made on ARA’s operation application to view the analyzed data and make decisions on treatments based on them.

ARA collects in-depth statistics like the amount of weeds present or the quantities of products already applied. Each of the ARA machines can detect attacks live with its geolocation feature, enabling human intervention in case anything goes south at unexpected times.

The ARA sprayer itself has a dual-tank system, one filled with 500 liters of water and the other with 200 liters of spray liquid, enabling mobile refilling in the field. The sprayer can operate during the day and night, and even during windy conditions, assisting farmers at times when they can’t operate.

At the moment, Ecorobotix can be operated on large crops, vegetable crops, as well as meadows and lawns. The company has plans to develop AVO, a robot that can automatically weed up to 10 hectares a day using 95% less weedkillers, with an aim to reduce the environmental impact farming can bring significantly.

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