Big success for small robots

The latest campaign seeks to bring SRC’s non-chemical weed zapping robot Dick to field trials, and the manufacture of a fleet of Tom monitoring robots for its commercial weed mapping service.

The company said investors were generally split into three categories – techies, environmentalists, and ‘lots of farmers’.

Landslide

Sam Watson Jones, SRC co-founder says: "This landslide success demonstrates the huge appetite for agtech - and the demand from farmers. This completely ignited our fundraising. It’s inspiring to see how much support there is for innovation in agriculture. It feels like the time is right for these technologies to start making a difference.

“It’s also closely aligned with the new Agricultural Bill: our technology is at the heart of these systemic changes in farming. Now is the time for us to work together to create a more sustainable farming model: and for farmers - rightly - to be rewarded for their efforts. The recent huge advances in agtech finally make this possible: and farmers are integral to the environmental solution.”

Working together in partnership with RootWave, SRC has successfully completed development of its Dick non-chemical weeding robot prototype to in-lab proof of concept stage.

An initial prototype will go into field trials in 2020, with the commercial weed zapping service anticipated to be available from autumn 2021.