This is only an aspect of the technical challenge. There is also a calculation speed. Sending the cloud image files slows down the identification process (assuming that you can get good internet access in a Wapato, Washington orchard), compared to the processing of edges or analyze images on local equipment attached to the camera.
The robotic arms must be agile enough to reach the branches and around the branches to pick the fruit and end of arms tools (EOAT) must provide pliers that provide just enough force to safely grasp the fruits without crushing it .
It is four different technologies in all.
“When you enter a startup, it’s very narrow, innovation … and when you go to the customer, he is looking (for) a finish loop. So you take someone like Kubota. We sell tractors and equipment … Could we be the one that has seams of these (technologies) together to make a solution from end to a point of pain of a particular customer? And that’s why it can make us look at two or three startups to really get the final product, ”says Stucke.
Or, Kubota can rather pivot towards declaration agreements (SOW) and proof of concept (POCS) with technological companies. Stucke says it is the current trend.
“You really can’t guide a startup. You are an investor. You get to know them so that you can see the progress of what they are doing. When you take a sow, you agree. And then you work with them, and you are next to them, and you can really see the progress. You learn more deeply in the business, can learn personalities, engineers and their operation, ”explains Stucke.
Skanderup says that working with a sow is not easier than acquiring a startup to own technology. It’s just different. And this is the real challenge that Stucke is confronted with. There is no standard operational procedure, no best practices, no settlement to dictate how each interaction between Kubota and a technological business should go.
Everyone must integrate into the leadership structure created by Kubota, so there is the coherence from this point of view. But how specifically manages individual technological companies in this general framework almost always presents a unique challenge.