Fieldin acquires Midnight Robotics to develop autonomous tractors
Acquisitions are reshaping the smart farming landscape. The latest example comes from Fieldin — the world's largest intelligent farm operations management company for high-value crops, which has acquired autonomous farm driving company Midnight Robotics.
To advance agricultural robotics, these companies should have joined forces long before COVID-19 became a global collective problem. Population growth and environmental concerns were major drivers for those trying to figure out how to feed people in the future. Meanwhile, the pandemic only heightened concerns, as many farmers struggled to staff their fields with workers.
Fieldin, based in California, helps farmers speed up data collection and automation. Meanwhile, Midnight equips tractors and other farm equipment with LiDAR-based detection technology. Getting started takes about a day. As with many other services, the company sends a technician to the farm to help farmers handle the installation on site.
The deal between the two companies is a sign of the rapid development of intelligent agriculture, which uses Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and artificial intelligence to manage farm operations with unprecedented precision and helps transform food production in wealthy markets.
The acquisition creates a platform for sensor-based, real-time farming with autonomous driving technology, giving producers the ability to manage their farms continuously. This is the agricultural equivalent of a "lights-out farm," a concept already implemented on large farms in California.
“Many people think autonomous tractors are some kind of magic solution, but in the end they are just machines — your autonomous farm can be only as good as the farm management data behind it, and that is why this acquisition is a driving force of the future autonomous revolution in agriculture. Over the past eight years, we have digitized hundreds of farms and more than 10,000 tractors and agricultural machines — more than anyone else in the world of high-value crops — and collected invaluable data that can provide insight into best practices in farm management. By acquiring Midnight Robotics, we are helping farmers close the loop from understanding to autonomous action, so they know exactly what needs to be done and carry it out autonomously, using the same platform”
Agriculture is rapidly adopting IoT and automation technologies in response to growing pressures, including labor shortages, climate change and drought. Precision agriculture — a versatile, digital-technology-based approach to farming — is being deployed across various use cases to improve food production efficiency.
The Fieldin platform collects agricultural data through distributed sensor networks and provides decision-making insights on issues such as pesticide use and water resource management. With the addition of autonomous tractors, these decisions can now be carried out autonomously. Midnight upgrades tractors and other farm equipment with LiDAR-based autonomy kits that feed data back to the platform in real time.
“Having excellent agricultural data or excellent autonomous technology is not enough — you need both for autonomous farming to become a reality. What makes this merger so strong is the powerful combination of Fieldin's unprecedented agricultural data collection, which includes more than 49 million hours. We are excited to join forces with Fieldin, because only together can we help farmers benefit from intelligent and autonomous farming — not in ten years, but today”
Midnight co-founders Yonatan Horowitz and Edo Reshef will join Fieldin as director of autonomy and chief technology officer, respectively. Under the deal, both will be listed as co-founders of Fieldin.
Horowitz noted that Fieldin has the largest agricultural dataset. The companies plan to use this data to ensure flawless operation on farms.
Midnight's retrofit kit can turn any tractor into a robot using advanced LiDAR perception algorithms. To start, the company will test its retrofit kits in vineyards and orchards, since they leave the least room for error. After the technology is refined in more complex conditions, it will become easy to use in open fields with much simpler setups.
"Fieldin's command center provides specialty crop growers with real-time, actionable data that improves transparency and efficiency across all operations. This real-time data allows users to process 25% more acres per shift during spraying, harvesting and other mechanized cultivation practices," Fieldin said.
At first glance, the solution the companies offer is an easier life than many existing technologies, which require farmers to buy entirely new equipment, something too expensive for most people on limited budgets.
