Applied AI and robotics company TerraClear has secured US$25m (£17.6m) in series A funding, to expand availability of its rock picker system.
Designed to tackle rocks in fields, which would break machinery and slow precision farming, the Rock Picker can remove on average 400 rocks per hour, as well as carrying up to 300lb.
The robotic gripper works on a compact track loader or skid steer and will soon be compatible with front-end loaders on tractors.
In the past year, TerraClear has deployed early versions of their solution that both map and clear fields of rocks. The first release of the first Rock Picker sold out, with a second run expected to be delivered at the end of this summer.
Founder Brent Frei grew up on his family’s farm in Idaho and returned to this passion after founding tech company, Smartsheet. He explained: “This is something I’ve personally dealt with my entire life.
“There are more than 400 million arable acres worldwide that have been waiting for a cost-effective and productive solution to this problem. Repetitive tasks like this are optimal targets for automation, and the technologies we are bringing to the field dramatically reduce the labour and time needed to prep fields for planting.”
TerraClear’s future product roadmap includes integrating AI and computer vision with a fully autonomous rock picker platform.
“We’re working every day towards a fully autonomous solution for rock picking – and that is a multi-year project. Along the way, we’re building solutions that solve this problem better than anything out there,” said TerraClear’s president Trevor Thompson.
The company also offers mapping and clearance services for those looking for a plug and play solution. Working with TerraClear or third party drone services, Terraclear maps fields, uses AI to locate large rocks and then deploys the Rock Picker to clear the field.
