Kubota and the Norwegian robotics company Kilter have signed a European framework agreement to expand sales and support for the AX-1, an autonomous robot that sprays individual weeds. The robot is already sold in Germany and the Netherlands, and the two companies are now looking at France and the UK.
The AX-1 is built mainly for high-value crops such as vegetables and herbs, where hand weeding is costly and blanket spraying wastes chemical. Its cameras and AI-based machine vision identify each weed, and Kilter's Single Drop Technology then places a small droplet of herbicide directly on it.
Kilter says the method can cut herbicide use by up to 95% compared with conventional spraying, depending on conditions and the application. According to the company, 66 AX-1 robots are now working and together have avoided the use of more than one million litres of herbicide.
Under the deal, Kubota will use its European dealer, parts and service network to roll the robot out market by market. Kilter spare parts are already stocked at Kubota's European Parts Centre in Thionville, France, and dealers can order them through the same system they use for Kubota machinery.
The agreement was signed on 22 July by Kilter managing director Kristoffer Magnor and Kubota Holdings Europe president Shinichi Yamada and builds on the companies' existing partnership in Germany and the Netherlands. It gives Kilter a far larger sales and service base, and adds an autonomous precision-weeding system to Kubota's smart-farming range. No timetable has been given for the new markets.
Photo: joost j. bakker / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Source: Future Farming
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