An agricultural-tech startup that makes robots capable of plucking food grown in greenhouses is celebrating a harvesting feat for a new crop type.
The GR-100 robot from Four Growers, a startup that is based in Turtle Creek, can now harvest cucumbers in addition to select cherry tomato varieties. It's an achievement that comes as CEO and Co-Founder Brandon Contino prepares the company for a Series A funding raise.
It's also a feat that current Four Growers customers, which span North America and Europe, can take advantage of now following a software update to the GR-100 and the swapping of the tomato gripping attachment in favor of one that's more attuned for cucumber harvesting. Contino said he envisions future crop harvesting feats for the GR-100 will see similar software and hardware updates that will then unlock additional capabilities for Four Growers' customers.
"In that regard, [there are] very minimal changes to the core tech and that for us gets exciting because then when we get to the next crop and the crop after that, our whole goal is really to build robots—not that do [just] tomatoes or cucumbers—but robots that can do everything," Contino said. "It's a nice proof point, I think, for the core tech of that perception model, all the motion planning and then being able to just use different grippers shows promise that we actually can eventually one day do everything."
Contino said the only customer relationship he can talk about publicly at this time is the one Four Growers has with Syngenta AG, a Switzerland-based agricultural science and technology company known for its seed and pesticide products. He said Four Growers has worked with Syngenta beyond just harvesting tomatoes for them to develop specific cherry tomato seed varieties that have a "really great taste" but are also efficient for Four Growers' robot's harvesting mechanisms.
He also said the development of the cucumber harvesting capability came following a prototyping period with one of Four Growers' Canadian customers, which is now the first to have Four Grower's GR-100 plucking tomatoes and cucumbers in its greenhouses.
"Having robots that are running every day across two different continents has gone a lot smoother than I would have ever expected," Contino said. "It's been great to just have robots continually running and it's, for ag-tech especially; I feel like it's one of those big milestones. Can you cross the chasm of a commercial solution or not, and to be on the other side of that, it feels really good. Lots of work still to be done on scaling now, but it's really fun to have the commercial solution running every day."
Four Growers has raised $7 million in seed and preseed funding so far. It employs 15 people full-time.
