Fieldwork Robotics Ltd. (“Fieldwork”), developers of selective, adaptive and modular harvesting robots is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a £515k grant from the Department of Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to accelerate its £1.1m BerryBot Project. Fieldwork will lead the project working alongside Performance Projects Ltd., leaders in agricultural robotics manufacturing and the Hall Hunter Partnership, one of the UK’s largest berry growers. The project is focused on increasing the performance and robustness of Fieldwork Robotics’ raspberry harvesting robot, Alpha, which will allow Fieldwork to offer an operational and profitable robotics harvesting service to UK raspberry growers by 2025.
The BerryBot Project will further develop the robot’s hardware, software and control/vision to enable picking at an enhanced rate. These engineering advancements will allow Fieldwork to offer an operational and profitable robotics harvesting service for UK raspberry growers.
Project partner Performance Projects Ltd. (PP) is a leader in robust mobile platforms for agricultural robots, which has among others developed the state-of-the-art GoFAR agritech platform driven by OxDrive hub motors.
PP’s experience with GoFAR is invaluable for this project and will be harnessed to create the mobile platform for Fieldwork’s robot to increase uptime and mobility.
As an end-user, the project includes the Hall Hunter Partnership (HHP) one of the UK’s largest berry producers. This will expand upon the existing collaboration between Fieldwork and HHP.
Throughout the project, the robotics technology will be tested regularly at HHP’s raspberry farms, enabling the team to make adjustments based on real-world usage helping to optimise the productivity of the robot. This collaboration will also allow the team to identify the optimum raspberry growing environment, further enhancing the benefit to farmers of Fieldwork’s technology.
This grant award follows a recent £3m+ funding round, which included a £1.5m investment from Elbow Beach Capital and a £1.5m+ Seedrs crowd fundraise.
David Fulton, Fieldwork Robotics CEO commented:
“We are delighted to have been awarded this Innovate UK grant and I am thrilled that we will be working with Performance Projects and the Hall Hunter Partnership, two leading organisations in the robotics and engineering and raspberry market sectors. We look forward to leading the team as we progress our technology to tackle significant issues in the UK agriculture sector: labour shortages and food waste.”
Alana Deacon, Head of Operations, Hall Hunter Partnership commented:
“The challenge of labour shortages is and continues to be a pressing concern for farmers in the United Kingdom. To mitigate these concerns, it is imperative that we foster close collaboration with cutting-edge solutions designed to strengthen the industry, ensuring not only its resilience but also its sustained growth and prosperity. We are pleased to be supporting UK farming innovation through our involvement with this project.”
Chris Horton, Director, Performance Projects commented:
“This is a really exciting project for us to test and approve the advanced capabilities of our agricultural robotics technology. We are pleased to be working with Fieldwork to advance this technology and look forward to seeing the end result of our collaboration.”
