The global farm labor crisis isn’t new, but automation’s response finally is. From autonomous tractors to drone-mounted crop scouts, robots are now performing end-to-end workflows: 🌱 Planting 🧠 Monitoring 🤖 Weeding 🌾 Harvesting And they’re getting smarter with each

John Deere made its biggest robotic play yet: acquiring GUSS Automation, a leader in autonomous sprayers. 🧃 2.6M acres sprayed 🚜 500K operational hours 🔋 90% chemical reduction The message is clear, precision ag isn’t just about data. It’s about machines that act on it.

Then there’s FarmWise, using AI-powered weeders that operate in the field without supervision. No pesticides. No human fatigue. Just a robot pulling unwanted plants at industrial scale. It’s the Uber for weeding, but built on machine vision and torque.

Seattle-based Carbon Robotics took agricultural robotics a step further with its LaserWeeder G2. It uses deep computer vision, and dozens of CO₂ lasers to identify and vaporize weeds at sub-millimeter precision, processing 4.7M images per hour, zapping up to 600,000 weeds per

Startups aren’t standing still. 🟢 Bonsai Robotics raised $15M to build autonomous nut harvesters 🟠 Designed for dusty orchards with minimal visibility 🔧 Trained on LIDAR + edge AI Goal: replace seasonal labor with full-time automation, no GPS needed.

In Australia, SwarmFarm Robotics is building an open platform for modular, right-to-repair farm bots. Each robot, named “Robbie” or “Bottomley Potts” can spray, seed, or cultivate. Farming becomes scalable, decentralized, and resilient. Their slogan? “Let robots do the dirty

Why this matters: → $30B+ global ag labor shortage → Stricter environmental regs → Pressure for local, sustainable production Ag robotics isn’t a moonshot. It’s an infrastructure layer, like tractors were in 1910.

The future of farming won’t look like Wall-E. It’ll look like swarms of compact robots, working soil gently, responding in real time, and learning from each harvest. Less brute force. More brains, less runoff, and more resilience. The robot harvest has already begun 🌾

@lukas_m_ziegler this thread is amazing!! 🙏 any tips on how to get started? (hands-on and not looking for a job)

@DiogoSnows good question, physical a completely different matter than digital. you are allowed here to break things, build them again, learn from it, build, and break and again... i think, doing by learning, and accomplishing project by project, increasing the level of complexity!

@lukas_m_ziegler Using drones (rather than just having robotic arms on the harvester) seems like a gimmick and wildly inefficient. The power alone required to keep the drones just hovering seems excessive.

@chuckmonkey2010 thx, although seems like tevel is doing great these days. these drones are much cheaper to produce than regular ground machines, so the business case might be actually there for this specific fruit picking approach

@lukas_m_ziegler if inverse kinematics didnt exist, i would still not use drones.

@DrenKenMaster u mean, for manipulation tasks right? because, when it comes to surveillence, inspection from bird POV it's hard to compete with them, but when it comes to manipulation, object handling, agreed, often over-enginereed flying robots, that could have been ground robots

@lukas_m_ziegler Incredible thread, thanks for sharing. I read Tony Seba's report in 2021 on precision fermentation and how robots, AI and science was going to disrupt agriculture and the cow. Wild to see it beginning to take shape.

@lukas_m_ziegler Cool

@lukas_m_ziegler Automation's impact on agriculture is profound. Consider the implications for food security and rural employment.

@lukas_m_ziegler nice but too slow

@lukas_m_ziegler 1. This is possibly the most impractical and cost-inefficient use of drones. This is the definition of solving a problem that doesn't exist. 2. This video is at least 1 year old. Stop posting old stuff as if it's new.

@lukas_m_ziegler And so it begins.

@lukas_m_ziegler This video is from 2023, https://www.businessinsider.co... Founded in 2017 by Yaniv Maor, Tevel is an Israeli robotics startup that develops Flying Autonomous Robots™ (FARs) for fruit harvesting.

@lukas_m_ziegler We no longer need immigrant to pick the crops.

@lukas_m_ziegler Good lord a drone picking one by one like that is not efficient

@lukas_m_ziegler I picked apples as a teenager, this robot isn't earning enough money for gas, let alone a living wage. Personally I welcome my new robot overlords, but this is pathetic.

@lukas_m_ziegler This is why I have stopped buying supermarket fruit. The factories where it is grown are concerned only with profit so they are being pumped up with water and other chemicals to fetch a higher price when sold by weight. Small ethnic markets have better quality.

@lukas_m_ziegler I just want a small one for pulling weeds in my little garden

@lukas_m_ziegler All for automation but this is probably the worst solution you could possibly think of Can think of 0 tangible benefits of 6 tethered drones on a cart 😭

@lukas_m_ziegler What's cost to implement? Then cost of upkeep and maintenance? Can family farms afford these systems?

@lukas_m_ziegler There's no way this is profitable.

@lukas_m_ziegler Reminds me a bit of this