Wavemaker Labs Acquires IP from Agtech Startup Abundant Robotics

Wavemaker Labs, a corporate venture studio and product development incubator, has acquired intellectual property (IP) from Abundant Robotics. The agtech startup, which spun out of SRI International in 2016, was developing a robot to harvest apples before it shut down in June 2021. Wavemaker did not hire any employees from Abundant Robotics, and the terms of the deal are unknown. 

Future Acres, a Wavemaker portfolio company, is exploring how to use part of the intellectual property to potentially improve its Carry mobile robot. The bot is designed to transport up to 227 kg of crops around a farm. Future Acres is considering integrating Abundant's computer vision and vacuum end-effector technology into Carry, which currently has no manipulation capability.

The company says it builds agricultural devices that bring farms into the future. "To feed 10 billion people by 2050, farmers around the world will need to increase food production by 70%," Future Acres says. Carry is a harvesting companion robot that can boost farm efficiency by 30%, paying for itself in just 80 days. 

"Our goal is to help American agriculture grow through innovative and easily adaptable farm equipment that automates the most challenging tasks to deliver higher yields, profitability and future growth," Future Acres says. 

Abundant's harvesting robot combined computer vision with a vacuum end-effector to select and pick ripe apples. It then moved the fruit into a special bin. The company claimed its device could reach 50% to 90% of the apples on a tree and pick one apple every two seconds. Abundant said it aimed for a picking speed of 1.5 seconds for a commercial version of the robot. It also planned to expand the range of fruits it could harvest in the future. 

However, the company put its intellectual property up for sale on June 29, 2021. In a liquidation memorandum, Abundant said it had failed to secure the market support needed to fund its business during the coronavirus pandemic. The company said its IP includes a large number of vacuum manipulation patents, a patented sensing system that allows the vacuum to move around obstacles, a patented machine vision system for identifying fruit and its quality, and several software patents for automated device operation. 

According to the memorandum, Abundant, in partnership with one of New Zealand's largest apple producers, T&G Global, tested the apple-picking robot in small commercial trials. Similar small trials were also conducted with several customers in the US. Notably, the orchard market is worth about $200 billion, of which about $40-60 billion is apple production. 

In addition, Abundant was unable to raise another round of funding. Since its founding, the company had raised a total of $12 million. Key competitors include FFRobotics (Israel), Ripe Robotics (Australia), and Tevel (Israel). Tevel won the 2021 RBR50 Robotics Innovation Award for its drone, which uses vision and an attached gripping robotic arm to pick ripe fruit. 

Abundant planned to use a robotics-as-a-service model. It would own, maintain, transport and operate robots in exchange for payment under contracts with farms, focusing on two 90-day harvesting seasons: August to November in the Northern Hemisphere and February to May in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Abundant said that over four years of joint development with industry leaders in the US, Europe and Oceania, it had built a "strong business development pipeline worth more than $100 million." The company projected positive cash flow "as early as the second quarter of 2024, with revenue at that point of less than 2% of the total addressable market." 

Future Acres has raised $1.25 million since its founding in September 2020. This includes more than $1 million through a campaign that closed on October 6 via the SeedInvest crowdfunding platform. Future Acres CEO Suma Reddy recently told The Robot Report about her passion for agriculture, the challenges farmers face today, and how automation can help. 

Wavemaker Labs was founded in 2011. Other companies in its robotics portfolio include Miso Robotics, which recently partnered with Caliburger to build a robotic kitchen assistant; Graze Mowing, which is developing an autonomous lawn mower for commercial landscapers; and Piestro, a robotic pizzeria.

In July 2020, Martin Buehler was appointed chief technology officer of Wavemaker Labs. He is well known in the robotics industry and previously held leadership roles at Boston Dynamics, Creator, Disney Imagineering, iRobot, Medtronic and Vecna. All of Abundant's founders have left the company. Kurt Salisbury is currently chief scientist at Amazon, Dan Steer is an independent consultant and advisor to several companies including Savioke, and Michael Eriksen is a senior staff robotics engineer at Canvas Construction.