TopFarmRobots · Farm robots, weekly · Week of October 19, 2026
Hi there,
Welcome to issue four. Quick intro if you're new: I'm Carl Lippert, a farm owner and technologist. Keeping up with farm robots is my side project, and this newsletter and topfarmrobots.com are where I share what I find.
Last week I asked what you'd like more of. The answer that came back was 4, funding and company news, so this week leans that way: a £4.8 million UK hub for testing farm robots, a crop camera that now comes factory-fitted on Valtra tractors, and Korea's largest farm-machinery maker putting a date on an electric self-driving tractor.
The spotlight is Picker AgRobotics, an Israeli startup whose long, bendy arm picks fruit without a gripper. Its CEO is on the speaker list at FIRA USA in Yakima this week.
This week's question. Hit reply with just a number: which free extra would you actually use?
1 – a monthly roundup of farm-robot funding rounds
2 – a list of farm-robot companies that are hiring
3 – a side-by-side sheet of robot prices and specs
4 – none, the weekly email is enough
Bonus points: name the robot maker you'd like me to spotlight next. I read every reply.
New on TopFarmRobots
4X Delta Cobot
A transplanting robot from 4XROBOTS, a Danish company. It hangs over an existing greenhouse line and moves young plants from germination trays into pots. Sensors stop it the moment it touches something, so staff can work right next to it, and the company says installing, calibrating and testing it takes 2–3 working days in most greenhouses. In a HortiDaily interview, the company said Peace Tree Farm in Pennsylvania runs one, with the staff who used to transplant by hand now supervising it, and that integrator FGM put four of its robots into a hydroponic system at Goodness Gardens.
Pragyanik AI Avighna X1 Lite
A prototype field robot from Pragyanik AI in Indore, India, built for small and mid-size Indian farms. It's a 3-by-2-foot, four-wheel-drive machine that carries 100–150 kg, finds weeds with cameras so it can spray only where needed, and steers with precise satellite positioning plus LiDAR to avoid obstacles. Swappable tools let it weed, spray, seed and spread fertilizer. Startuppedia reported on Oct 10 that it runs about 8–10 hours on a charge and supports solar-assisted charging.
Fullwood Merlin 2+
The next version of Fullwood's stainless-steel milking robot, where cows walk in to be milked on their own schedule. Fullwood says it is more compact than the original Merlin, with simpler controls and fewer parts that tend to fail, and keeps its Streampulse milking, which the company says gets an average of 60% of a cow's milk in the first two minutes. It goes on sale in late 2026, and the current Merlin stays available through the first quarter of 2027.
Company spotlight: Picker AgRobotics
Picker AgRobotics started in Israel in February 2025. Its harvester uses a long, flexible, hollow arm that reaches deep into the tree, cuts the fruit's stem, and lets the fruit roll down through the arm into the grower's own bin. There is no gripper. It trained first on avocados (big, untrimmed trees, with green fruit against green leaves) and is aiming at oranges, lemons, pears and apples next.
Co-founder and CEO Yossi Rosenblum told AgFunderNews that short, rigid robot arms "can barely take 30% of the fruit, and we're aiming for 95%." The units are towed or hitched to a tractor, and one operator, or one self-driving vehicle, can run four or five at once.
His cost pitch: where Central Valley citrus is harvested at $25 per 900-lb bin, Picker says it can do it for $20. It plans to lease the machines first and sell them later. It has built four units so far, each a new generation, and plans customer pilots starting in January 2027, first in Israel, then California, and probably Spain.
Recent founder talk: Rosenblum explains the arm and the business plan in an 8-minute AgFunderNews video interview (Oct 5, 2026), recorded at World Agri-Tech in London. This week he's on the FIRA USA speaker list with a session called "Picker: A New Paradigm in Orchard Harvesting."
In the news
UK backs a £4.8 million farm-robot testing hub (Oct 9). The University of Lincoln won £4.8 million, part of a £7.1 million Innovate UK investment, to run HARVEST, one of eight new UK Robotics Adoption Hubs picked from 74 applications. It includes £500,000 for a robot test track at the university's Riseholme Park farm campus and a £1 million Acceleration Fund that UK agri-food robotics businesses can apply to. Partners include Saga Robotics, Dogtooth Technologies, Dynium, JABAS AI, Cranswick and British Berry Growers. This is just news, we were not paid to share this.
Why it matters: The money is aimed at getting robots onto farms, not lab research: a place to test machines on a real farm, plus help for UK companies to get past the specific problems that stop farms from using their robots. University of Lincoln · On TopFarmRobots
PerPlant's crop camera now comes factory-fitted on Valtra tractors (Oct 14). PerPlant, a Copenhagen startup founded in 2022, makes a two-camera AI sensor that mounts on the tractor roof and maps the crop as you drive, so sprayers and spreaders can apply only where needed. Valtra will offer it from the factory on its A105 and A115, G, N, T, Q and S Series tractors in selected European markets, with sales starting this month. PerPlant says farmers using it have cut inputs by 40% to 87%, depending on the implement, and that its sensors have mapped more than 250,000 hectares in 12 countries.
Why it matters: Farmers can get this kind of targeting with a new tractor instead of buying a new sprayer. AgFunderNews
Daedong dates its electric self-driving tractor: 2030 (Oct 15). Daedong, Korea's largest farm-machinery maker (Kioti in the US), said a 55 kW (about 74 hp) battery-electric tractor project was picked as a signature project in Korea's K-GX green-transition program. The tractor is aimed at self-driving tillage and spraying in orchards, with a battery for four to five hours of work. The plan: core technology by 2027, field trials in Korea and abroad in 2028–2029, and sales in 2030.
Why it matters: It's a big incumbent tractor maker putting a public timeline on an electric, self-driving machine, and the timeline is four years out. Mekawire · On TopFarmRobots
Worth watching
Jandals in Japan, Episode 79: Why Yamaha Agriculture bought Robotics Plus
Nolan Paul, CEO of Yamaha Agriculture, gives the buyer's side of Yamaha's 2025 purchase of Robotics Plus, the New Zealand maker of orchard vehicles and fruit-packing robots, and what it takes to make an acquisition work (published Oct 5, 2026). It's part two of a series. In part one (Sep 7), Robotics Plus co-founder Steve Saunders tells the story from the startup's side.
Listen to episode 79 · Part one with Steve Saunders · Robotics Plus on TopFarmRobots
Coming up
Nature Robots Autonomy Days · Nov 16–17, Osnabrück, Germany
Two days at the Coppenrath Innovation Centre, hosted by Nature Robots for machinery makers, researchers and startups. Day one (Nov 16, from 1pm) is for meeting people: round tables, speed-dating sessions and a small exhibition, organized with Netzwerk PhytoPhotonik and AgriFlexBot. Day two (Nov 17, 8am to 5:15pm) has keynotes, a panel and live demos on where self-driving farm machines actually stand today, the rules for autonomous machines, and what it takes to make an existing machine drive itself.
Also in November: EIMA International, the big farm-machinery show in Bologna, Italy (Nov 10–14). Business visitors from outside Italy can request a free e-ticket.
Event details and programme · EIMA free e-ticket · All upcoming events
Don't forget: hit reply with 1, 2, 3, or 4 (and the company you'd like spotlighted). It takes five seconds and tells me which extra is worth trying first. — Carl
Building a farm robot? Submit it to the catalog with the "Submit a robot" button at topfarmrobots.com.