Together, Strube, Fraunhofer EZRT and Naïo Technologies share the same goal: contribute to more sustainable agricultural practices aligned with the current societal, environmental and economical expectations.

This is the next step for Strube in the announced company strategy called VisionBlue.

“Strube, as a responsible supplier of the sugar-beet value chain, has decided to develop progress not only in breeding but also in new methods of beet cultivation. We are convinced that precision farming and robotic will play an important role to face the challenges of tomorrow”,

emphasizes Martin Reisige, managing director from Strube D&S.

By signing this partnership with Strube, Naïo Technologies shares its expertise in agricultural robotization, serving a new crop, that of sugar beet.

“Based on our respected experience gained on vegetable and wine, we are delighted to use now our expertise for new type of cultures. Our cooperation with Strube will result with a robotic mechanical weeding solution for their beets’ fields”,

explains Aymeric Barthes, CEO of Naïo Technologies.

The long-term cooperation between Fraunhofer EZRT and Strube has led to a successful development of a wide variety of systems for sugar beet research.

“We are pleased to contribute our extensive competencies in the fields of cognitive sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) to this important and future-oriented research field,”

explains Prof. Dr. Randolf Hanke, Divisional Director of Fraunhofer EZRT.

This collaboration highlights a common desire to adapt to the new weeding methods. The first outputs of this partnership will be presented in the upcoming months.

The post Strube signs a partnership agreement with Naïo Technologies and Fraunhofer Institute to develop innovative agricultural robotics solutions appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.

The French company, founded in 2011 by robotic engineers Aymeric Barthes and Gaëtan Séverac, manufactures and markets agricultural solutions in close collaboration with farmers. Their weeding robots respect both the environment and man: they provide a solution to assist farmers in their daily work, reduce the strenuous physical workload and limit the use of chemical weedkillers. This new investment round will enable Naïo Technologies to further capitalize on its position as a leader in agricultural robotics and reach the next level of technology maturity in order to prepare the robots for mass production.
Aymeric Barthès, CEO of Naïo Technologies, explains:

« During the past years, we have made a lot of progress on navigation, user experience and security aspects. This makes our robots a solid base for precision farming. Our next step is to focus on further increase of the reliability of our robots as well as develop an efficient and large-scale deployment strategy. »

 

Nearly 150 robots (Oz, Dino and Ted) are already deployed at farms and vineyards both in Europe and in the United States. The promise of contributing to more sustainable agricultural practices, combined with the company’s ability to demonstrate market readiness over the past 18 months, have contributed to the successful closing of this funding round.

Continuously innovation allows the company to handle different crops types. To do so, Naïo Technologies has developed a standard navigation system for agricultural robots. This navigation system can be implemented on any off-road robot which allows to address many crop types. Gaëtan Séverac, co-founder of Naïo Technologies says:

“In the next 10 years, there will be robots in every fields of Europe and North America. We recognize that the challenge is very ambitious, but we are convinced that we can meet it alongside our partners and stakeholders. Our goal is to ensure the ecological and social transition to sustainable agriculture” .

Laura Panquet, Ecotechnologies Fund of Bpifrance, says:

“We are very proud to announce our investment in Naïo Technologies as pioneer in agricultural field robotics. Naïo enables farmers to transition their farms using the rise in precision farming and sustainable farming, and allows them to meet both customer demand and current and forthcoming regulatory constraints regarding the limitation of chemical inputs in the fields.”

Riadh Shaiek, Partner at Demeter, and Tom Espiard, Managing Partner at Capagro, explain:

“Demeter and Capagro are very excited by this new financing round that will provide Naio with additional means to pursue a growing Ag Robotics market while maintaining its leadership position. We also welcome the participation of new and prominent investors that confirms the vision and attractive prospects we both shared about Naio when Demeter and Capagro first invested in the company at seed stage in 2015“

The post Naïo Technologies accelerates next growth phase with a new funding round of € 14 million appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.