Create a Clear Vision for the Future of Farming
Blue White Robotics is driven to solve these challenges that humans face – food scarcity, and labor shortages – by building a life-long solution for the modern farmer. They have created the safest, most reliable, and productive solution for the autonomous farm. Their solution is a vehicle-agnostic kit of sensors that can be added to tractors already in the field. The platform itself consists of cameras, GPS, and an Ouster OS1 LiDAR sensor. Integrating the solution is very intuitive. Simply mount a few brackets to hold the sensor suite and compute modules. Once installed, a tractor is capable of driving itself and performing tasks autonomously without the need for human interaction.
The Challenge
Faced with a rapidly growing world population expected to reach 10 billion by 2050 and a global labor crisis within the agriculture industry, farmers and growers need tools that can help them address this crisis in a sustainable way.
This, coupled with an increase in demand for production and a decrease in labor availability, has left farmers and growers struggling to increase efficiency and productivity. Without labor assistance or a technological solution farmers are losing millions of dollars in unharvested crops.
Autonomous technology in agriculture is not only necessary to improve processes and help with the labor shortage, but perhaps more importantly to help solve the upcoming global food crisis that experts are predicting will arrive in a quarter of a century.
The Solution
With a complete platform that includes infrastructure and connectivity, Bluewhite provides autonomous solutions for a range of agricultural tractors. By managing the autonomous operations of an entire farm’s fleet of tractors, one operator can oversee zero-downtime operations, increasing efficiency and productivity in the field.
The backbone of Bluewhite's current offering is its autonomous kit for existing tractors, Bluewhite Pathfinder. Designed to be OEM-agnostic, the Pathfinder is suitable for any type of tractor regardless of function and manufacturer. The kit's robust AI demands ultra high-precision navigation and real-time situational awareness, made possible by Ouster's 3D digital lidar.
In choosing Ouster, Bluewhite needed a lidar that would not only deliver the precise, rich point cloud necessary for autonomous operations, but also live up to the standards of durability that are of utmost importance in agricultural operations. The agricultural environment subjects equipment to an excessive amount of dust, shock, vibration, and huge temperature swings that can range from -6 to 46 °C in California's central valley. With its industry-leading durability and reliability, Ouster's 0S1 is the perfect fit.
In a market that is anticipated to reach 155.31 Billion by 2027, Blue White aims to provide a ROI starting on day one.
Results
Through a combination of hardware, software, and communications, Bluewhite is able to increase the efficiency of agricultural operations by up to 300%. By autonomously augmenting labor needs, Bluewhite is able to provide robust data for optimal planning and actionable insights for various farm tasks such as spraying schedules, monitoring, control, and report chemical applications. Through these improvements, Bluewhite is helping to address the global labor crisis and ensuring that crops are harvested in a timely manner, reducing food waste and increasing food security for all.
We have the crops but not enough workers to harvest them. It should be a crime-the idea that we would let this happen in a nation with our agricultural resources. Food insecurity is a national security threat... A country that can't provide food for its people is simply not secure.
Product Used
Case Studies to explore
Forterra
Developing life-saving autonomy technology for the Department of Defense
Open Space and Avanti West Coast Rail, UK
With an emphasis on proactive station management and creating a link between engineers, architects, and end-customer experience, Open Space and Avanti West Coast Rail are transforming the way the UK rail network is managed.
Forever - Made Possible By Ouster
Director Mitch McGlocklin's lidar based exploration of humanity's relationship with AI.