​**Innovatie in de Landbouw: Trabotyx en Meulwaeter Samen in de Strijd tegen Onkruid**

De komende twee jaar beloven veel goeds voor de biodynamische landbouwsector, dankzij een baanbrekende samenwerking tussen Trabotyx en biodynamisch landbouwbedrijf Meulwaeter. Ondersteund door Interreg en Breda Robotics, gaan deze twee pioniers gezamenlijk de strijd aan tegen onkruid met behulp van de innovatieve Trabotyx wiedrobot. Deze samenwerking is een belangrijke stap in de richting van duurzamere en efficiëntere landbouwmethoden, waarbij technologie en natuur hand in hand gaan.

Trabotyx, een vooraanstaand bedrijf in agrarische robotica, heeft een revolutionaire wiedrobot ontwikkeld die onkruid met precisie kan verwijderen zonder de gewassen te beschadigen. Deze robot maakt gebruik van geavanceerde beeldherkenningstechnologie en machine learning om onkruid te onderscheiden van gewassen en dit vervolgens nauwkeurig te verwijderen. Voor Meulwaeter, dat zich toelegt op biodynamische landbouwpraktijken, betekent deze technologie een aanzienlijke vermindering van de arbeidsintensiteit en een verbetering van de gewasgezondheid, zonder het gebruik van schadelijke chemische bestrijdingsmiddelen.

Met de steun van Interreg en Breda Robotics kunnen Trabotyx en Meulwaeter hun krachten bundelen om de wiedrobot in de praktijk te testen en verder te ontwikkelen. Deze steun biedt niet alleen financiële middelen, maar ook toegang tot een netwerk van experts en kennisdeling, wat de weg vrijmaakt voor verdere innovaties in de landbouwsector. Door deze samenwerking zullen de wiedrobots van Trabotyx een belangrijke rol spelen in het bevorderen van duurzame landbouwpraktijken en het verminderen van de ecologische voetafdruk van de voedselproductie.

Trabotyx neemt samen met Fieldworkers, PixelFarming Robotics, Odd.Bot & Aigro, het initiatief om gezamenlijk op te trekken om de obstakels voor biologische telers voor het gebruikt van landbouw robots weg te nemen. Lees hieronder het manifest

In 2022, as part of the Circulaire Landbouw subsidy of AgriFood Capital, Tim Kreukniet from Trabotyx and Gert Jan van Raaij from Van Raaij Eko BV worked together on the development of the Trabotyx weeding robot. 

The results where presented at the BioBeurs. The presentation can be found here.

We made big steps in the development, at the same time, additional time and R&D is needed to make the weeding robot market ready. 

For 2023, we are solely focussing on weeding in carrots on ridges and launching the weeding-as-a-service proposition with 5 farmers throughout the Netherlands. For more info please reach out.  

Door slim(mer) te werken kan een teler zijn werk vergemakkelijken, automatiseren, optimaliseren en opwaarderen. Robotisering verlaagt de arbeidsintensiviteit van de teelt en slim datamanagement draagt bij aan reductie in gebruik van water, meststoffen, gewasbescherming en energie. In het AgroBots-project, dat deze maand van start ging, ontwikkelen technologie-aanbieders en eindgebruikers in de agrofood samen negen concrete oplossingen voor de open teelten. Hierin wordt gebruik gemaakt van robotica en kunstmatige intelligentie. Deze projecten dienen als voorbeeld en inspiratie voor de hele sector en worden daarom gedeeld via bijeenkomsten en een online platform. Op dit platform kunnen partijen elkaar makkelijk vinden en samenwerkingen aangaan.

Projectpartners Holland Robotics (High Tech NL), Brabantse Ontwikkelingsmaatschappij (BOM), REWIN, FME, ZLTO, Aris, Avular, BioTrio de Nieuwe Weg, Brom Mechatronica, CJ Huiberts & Zn, Demcon, van Eijck, Loonbedrijf Verschuur & Oomen, Loop Robots, Odd.Bot, Technolution, Tective Robotics, Trabotyx, TU Eindhoven, Landgoed Velhorst en VOF van der Spek, ondersteund door Berenschot.

AgroBots wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door:Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling in het kader van de respons van de Europese Unie op de COVID-19-pandemieEuropees Innovatieprogramma Zuid-Nederland OPZuidMinisterie van Economische Zaken en Klimaat

What technologies from other industries can we use in agriculture to make it more sustainable. It was the main question asked by Liesbeth Staats and Werner Schouten on the BNR Koplopers podcast.

A nice question for Trabotyx to score some easy points.  However, I think the conversation about the agricultural transition should be more about smoothing out the path for farmers that want to farm more in line with the natural limits and less about all the technologies that can assist.

When a farmer changes from conventional to organic farming, they put everything on the line, without any guarantees. That takes courage and need to be supported by both government (for instance an UBI for farmers transitioning) and the market (better prices).
​
You can listen to the podcast here (in Dutch)

​Tim Kreukniet

September 8, Tim Kreukniet (CEO) accompanied by Trabotyx agronomic advisor Cornelis Knops from Crop Consult participated in the New Business Radio podcast.

It was a fun and at times deep conversation around Trabotyx, precision agriculture, the challenges you face as a start-up and as a farmer.

If you are new to Trabotyx, whether you are a farmer or just interested in the agtech and start-up space it is a nice introduction.

​

‘S Hertogenbosch | June 17, 2021 | Trabotyx got an investment from BOM, three angels and four agrarians. With this they can speed up the development of their autonomous weeding robot and service their first customers in 2022. 

“Mohamed, my co-founder and I are thrilled that with the close of this round we can bring our first version of the weeding robot to market in 2022. Weeding is currently done either by hand for organic farmers or by spraying herbicides by conventional farmers. The first is not scalable, the second has a negative impact on the environment. In line with upcoming European regulations, Trabotyx sees a massive need to automate weeding.” said Tim Kreukniet, Trabotyx CEO. 

Trabotyx is building a precision farming robot to simultaneously automate weed control and monitor field performance. Trabotyx MVP will focus on carrots, a crop that sees the most manual labor in the organic sector. In 5 years, Trabotyx aims to offer all farmers weeding solutions that are cheaper than spraying chemicals - thereby stimulating the enormous transition to sustainable food production while safeguarding farmers' bottom line. By using Trabotyx's solution, an organic farmer creates peace of mind and instantly saves 25% on labor cost.

“This round of funding will allow us to speed-up our software and hardware developments and further grow our multidisciplinary engineering team with experienced and talented people. It will also allow us to spend more time and effort on innovation and experimentation with novel approaches in solving the challenging problems of weeding automation, offroad autonomous robot mobility, reliability and most importantly safe operation.” according to CTO, Mohamed Boussama 

The company has recently closed a €560,000 seed round from BOM, joined the Business Incubator of the European  Space Agency and were granted a €150,000 Innovation Loan from RaboBank. On top of this, over the past six months, Trabotyx has doubled the number of farmers signed up to test their prototype.

“We are pleased that with this early stage investment we can help Trabotyx further develop their weeding robot”, says Investment Associate Bart van den Heuvel of the Brabant Development Company. “The market for agricultural robots will grow from 715 million to 2.5 billion euros in the coming years. With a strong agricultural and high-tech sector, Brabant is ideally placed for a leading role in that market. It is great that Trabotyx is now also part of the ecosystem that we are developing around precision agriculture.”

The Trabotyx team consists of CEO, Tim Kreukniet, who is deeply passionate about using tech for sustainability. He brought EVBox to the US market and bootstrapped the company through product certification and from zero to US$3m in hardware and services revenue. Mohamed Boussama, the team’s CTO has had a successful prior career in aeronautical engineering, both in hardware and software. He is very passionate in robotics and automation, especially in the field of Agriculture. Before starting Trabotyx have been building prototypes for onion planting robots for use in his family’s farms.

‘So far it has been an interesting journey, we never worked on a farm before, so we need to really listen to farmers to understand the issues they face. Seeing how much a farmer needs to do, to get products of their land, really deepened our respect for farmers. At the same time, they are facing constantly changing climate conditions and a changing regulatory environment. By providing an autonomous weeding robot, we hope to do our part and make the transition easier.’ Tim Kreukniet continues. 

The team of Trabtoyx met during Antler’s second founder cohort in Amsterdam. Youri Doeleman, a Partner at Antler Amsterdam, and the team’s coach, had this to say about the company:  “We are incredibly excited for the Trabotyx team. We believe in their mission and see many positive signs for Tim and Mohamed to be successful, especially given the mid-term EU regulatory push to increase organic agricultural production from 8% to 25% by 2030. On the commercial side, the fact they work with farmers regularly and that farmers are participating in this round is the ultimate sign of trust from your customer. We’re so proud of the progress they’ve made since first joining Antler.”
​
In December of 2020 the company joined the business incubation program of the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, ESA BIC Noordwijk, to leverage space technology for their farming robot. Program manager Martijn Leinweber:

“We are delighted to hear Trabotyx received funding from relevant stakeholders like agrarians and an experienced regional development agency like BOM. Together with our business and technical support, we are confident this investment will bring Trabotyx and their farming robot to the next level. Tim and Mohamed once again show the world how space technologies like high precision localisation and positioning with satellites can help smart farming. Above all, we are extremely happy for this amazing team.”