Muddy Machines

The Agritech and robotics company, Muddy Machines, is on a mission to drive the agriculture industry towards zero emissions with its battery-powered field robots. Founded by Florian Richter and Christopher Chavasse in 2020 with a vision to solve labour issues in farming sustainably, Muddy Machines have already been the recipient of a number of impressive awards like the gold award for Agri-Tech Innovator of the year in 2022 and were named ‘Startup of the Year’ at the West London Business Awards. Innovate UK and DEFRA have supported the company with four different research grants.

Within just two years, Florian and Chris have managed to secure over £2.5m in funding and built a robot asparagus harvester that has been commercially tested.

The Product

Muddy Machine’s robotic harvester for green aspargus, named Sprout, uses cutting edge AI and the latest sensor technologies to autonomously drive through fields harvesting accurately for up to 16 hours a day with no decline in performance.

Asparagus is one of the most labour intensive crops as harvesting occurs daily throughout the 12 week season. While other companies have largely ignored asparagus, because by itself it is a relatively small volume crop, Muddy Machines believe that starting with the crop most suited to robotic harvesting is best, before iterating to develop harvesters for more challenging crops.

Sprout uses the latest in deep learning technology to detect and delicately pick asparagus spears according to the growers specifications. The robot is lightweight and fully electric, avoiding damaging soil compaction and enabling a green, sustainable and resilient future for UK horticulture.