About Me
Carbon Robotics is leading a revolution. Recent advances have unlocked the industry-reshaping potential of AI powered robotics – specifically the combination of computer vision, AI/deep learning, and robotics. The first multi-billion applications will be in industries with specific use cases and defined dollar value. Agtech unlocks the potential of AI Robotics now. Farms are a controlled environment, every action has a dollar value, it’s a massive market, and growing food is a fundamental, global, and universal activity that human beings do for each other. Broadly, farmers do three things: planting, weeding, and harvesting. Of these, weed control is the biggest problem. It is their number one biggest annual expense and is non-discretionary, ubiquitous, and constant. Tools today are very limited: farmers are forced to choose between using an immense amount of increasingly scarce and costly hand labor, spraying harmful chemicals, or using mechanical solutions that disrupt and destroy topsoil (think, the Dust Bowl). Herbicides are failing, and herbicide resistant weeds are rapidly multiplying after 40 years of overspraying. Not only do the current tactics come with a set of issues, but there is also a limit to how long these tactics can last. Farmers are eager for an option that offers immediate economic savings, results in healthier higher quality crops, and that is sustainable and regenerative for the future. Enter Carbon Robotics - the first and only AI-powered LaserWeeder™. Carbon Robotics produces revolutionary AI-powered robotic systems that precisely identify, weed and thin specialty vegetable crops using lasers with millimeter accuracy, while observing the conditions of the crop and soil in a field for later analysis. Its technology reduces the use of herbicides in traditional farming, eliminates unnecessary tilling for regenerative farming, and in many cases eliminates the need for weeding crews of up to 75 people per field per LaserWeeder unit. Carbon Robotics has sophisticated AI/deep learning and over 8 million labeled crop and weed image objects that, in the weeding application, delineate between individual weeds and crops in order to eliminate only the weeds, all in real time, at tractor speeds of 1-2 mph (2-4 acres per hour). These robots are also able to thin crops to maximize crop health and yields per acre. In early 2022, Carbon launched the commercial LaserWeeder and began targeting large vegetable growers in Arizona, California, Idaho, New Mexico, Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington State. This year, the LaserWeeder will be delivered to farms across 17 U.S. states and three provinces in Canada., with expansion into international markets to follow Carbon Robotics was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Units are manufactured in Detroit, Michigan and shipped directly to growers in North America. The company has raised $67 million in funding to date.