The InsightTRAC Rover is the winner of the Agricultural Robot of the Year award. The autonomous rover retrieves nuts, or mummies, from an almond orchard that have been infested with navel orange bugs.
Geert Hekkert, editor in chief of Future Farming and René Koerhuis, editor specialised in robotics, announced the winner during the 7th edition of the World FIRA in Toulouse/Auzeville-Tolosane (France) on 9 February 2023. The InsightTRAC Rover was chosen from 16 initial candidates and 5 finalists by an expert jury consisting of Future Farming editors, robotics specialist and farmers from across the world. The other finalists included the AvL Motion Compact S9000, Exobotic Technologies Land-A2, Naïo Jo and Nexus Robotics La Chèvre robots.
Hitting the target
The 5 finalists were judged by each jury member individually according to these 5 criteria:
Originality/technical breakthrough
Feasibility/market readiness
Potential to impact farmer’s life
Ease of farmer uptake, and
Sustainability
The jury members were especially impressed by the way the InsightTRAC Rover is hitting the target, literally, by shooting the Navel Orangeworm infested nuts – mummies – out of the trees with biodegradable and thus sustainable pellets.
CEO Anna Haldewang: “It is really important that the trees are clean and the pests are removed before they emerge and fly around.” - Photo: InsightTRAC
Other arguments include the innovative way of working, the out of the box thinking and solution, the way their development is challenging the industry and the way it can inspire other robot manufacturers to develop solutions out of the ordinary yet commercially interesting. The rover is fulfilling a task that is only feasible and possible with a specialised field robot.
InsightTRAC Rover looks like a turnkey solution that farmers can easily adopt without having to change their farming practice.
A motivation expressed by the jury is that ‘the rover is not only performing its task in new and more sustainable way. It also looks like a turnkey solution that farmers can easily adopt without having to change their farming practice’.
Innovative solution for a specific market sector
Another motivation says ‘the InsightTRAC robot is an innovative solution for a specific market sector. It is a different type of robot to many on the market showing how robot design is evolving to solve the challenges growers are facing around the world. It is interesting to see how single job robots are developing to work alongside multi-functional tool carrying robots. The future of robots providing practical solutions across agriculture is incredibly exciting.’
It shoots the mummies out of the trees with this type of biodegradable pellets. The Rover is available for almond orchards initially but InsightTRAC plans to shift to other nut crops next. - Photo: InsightTRAC
From concepts to market ready solutions
In 2020 and 2021, Future Farming and World FIRA annually elected the Best Field Robot Concept. This was primarily to encourage start-ups and pioneers who are passionate about developing new robots. Start-ups developing a fully autonomous robot or innovative autonomous system for agriculture were to apply for the FIRA Start-Up pitch sessions, to be held during World FIRA 2023. As a winner, the InsightTRAC Rover will be featured as the main image in the promotion of the World FIRA of 2024, Future Farming will offer a canvas of their rover with the Ag Robot of the Year award logo and JoJo’s Vineyard (run by jury member Ian Beecher-Jones) from the UK is offering a bottle of their best wine to the winners.
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