Vertical farm robot startup Seasony secures innovation grant

Seasony, a developer of mobile robotics for vertical farming, has been awarded a grant from the Danish Innovation Foundation.

Launching in Fall 2023, this project aims to create image recognition algorithms that alert vertical farm growers to potential issues in two separate tracks.

The first track focuses on identifying poor seed germination to conserve water, energy, and nutrients from producing faulty crop.

The second track is dedicated to the early detection of diseases and pests, enabling growers to take pre-emptive measures before problems escalate.

Vertical farming is a rapidly evolving food production method, cultivating crops in controlled indoor multi-layered environments.

Projected to be a €25 billion industry by 2030, it revolutionizes food production by enabling year-round harvests, using 95 per cent less water, and eliminating pesticides.

Seasony estimates that data-driven strategies can amplify yields by up to 30% through reduced waste, efficiency gains, and higher crop output.

CEO Christopher Thomasen, CEO, says: “This marks Seasony’s first significant foray into data analytics.

“While our primary focus remains on automating transport and data collection tasks, this new capability will deliver enhanced insights to our clients.”

The technology leverages images captured by Seasony’s mobile robot “Watney”, which scans the farm throughout the day.

These images not only feed into the computer vision algorithms but are also available to users in a straightforward gallery format.

As the project progresses, Seasony will collaborate with existing vertical farm partners and actively seek pilot farms for testing this transformative technology.