Strawberries are The hottest berry in the USA for each consumers and farmers. They are also one of the most related fruit pesticides and consistently at the top of the environment working group List of “Dirty DOZEN” the most polluted products.
San Luis Obispo, from California Tric robotics He believes that this will help strawberry farmers reduce chemical use with UV light and robots.
The startup has built a fleet of robots that use UV-C light, the form of ultraviolet light, which is largely blocked by the Earth’s atmosphere to kill bacteria and damage pests. Autonomous tractor size robots can treat as much as 100 acres, in addition to use vacuum designed to suck on the stays of error without the rank of crops.
The company conducts works at Farms from daily as a service, unlike selling them on to farmers, because, although tougher to scale, this model seemed appropriate, which began to quickly obtain adhesion, said Adam Stager, co -founder and general director of TRIC.
“We worked a lot with farmers to understand the proper way to launch technology and the right business model,” said Stager. “We learned that many farmers pay for the control of pests as a service, so they have a company that comes and performs a spray. And what we did is simply replace it as a service model.”
While Stager said that the company was very focused on what farmers want, it was not all the time like that. In fact, Tric didn’t focus on agriculture at first.
Stager launched the company in 2017 after graduating from robotics. The company initially focused on 3D printed robots for SWAT teams. In 2020, Stager decided to rotate in the area, which he thinks would have a greater influence and began to focus on agriculture.
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“I really just wanted to answer the question if you were to die tomorrow, would you be happy with what you achieved in your life?” Stager said. “I was like, good, I really have to do something influential, which can help many people feel value for myself. In a sense I came across agriculture on this journey, [and realized] This is a place where we can influence so many people, almost everyone. “
Stager contacted the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to see if there is any technology that they worked on, that he could help commercialization, knowing from his doctoral program that many great technologies never leave the laboratory.
He connected with the USDA program, which connects people like a stager and scientists who have not yet commercialized their work. This range connected it with UV light technology, which became the basis of trica robotics.
“We loaded two robots that we built in a garage on a SUV,” said Stager and co-founder of Vishn Somasundaram about him. “We had two connections that USDA helped us build with farmers who would be willing to give us a small piece of land in 2021. And this is really the beginning when this company began. It was a surfing journey in Airbnb for eight months, where we arranged two works and received these amazing data with these farmers.”
Now the company, which also counts Ryan Berard as the third co -founder, cooperates with 4 large strawberry producers, arranged nine robots and has three more robots along the way.
Tric Robotics recently raised a $ 5.5 million round of flooding led by the One Venture version with Garage Capital, Todd and Rahul Capital and Lucas Venture Group, including investment corporations and individual angels.
The company plans to use money to further building its autonomous robots, and TRIC ultimately also desires to go to other types of crops.
“I think it will be really, a really bright future [agriculture] Tech, “said Stager.” I think people should know that things really go in a great direction, and there are really many exciting things. “