Orion Robotics Labs team looks to reshape future of farming

In their warehouse in Nunn, Sara and Brian Jennings are working to shape the future of farming by making autonomous agriculture robots safer.

Sara and Brian use a homemade platform which is equipped with cameras and sensors that capture data at the rate of one gigabit per 30 seconds to traverse their 70-acre farm in Nunn. 

They're using that data to create a prototype, the size of a notecard which will attach to agriculture robots helping them identify the environment around them which will in turn make them safer and more effective.

"I talked to one farmer that said, 'I'm not going to get an autonomous tractor because it stops too often,'" Sara said. "This system would allow (farmers) to not worry about it stopping and have it do its job."

"There's a bunch of automation that's happening in various places that could benefit from this," Brian adds. "Roadwork, construction, things like that. What we want to do is we want to make the robot safe. And let the robot do the work that needs to be done, whatever it is."

Sara is the CEO of Orion Robotics Labs while Brian is the CTO. Their team recently received a quarter of a million dollar grant from the state which will help them have a prototype ready by the end of April, and hopefully out to market by 2024.

"You have a harvester that goes down for an hour, it's $800 an hour," says Brian explaining the need for their sensor. "Most of your farmers don't have that kind of money to spare. Anything we can do to help them be more efficient to help them get the labor that they need and help them keep uptime on their machines, can only be helpful."

"I think this will change the future of farming," adds Sara. "This is only going to allow more ag tech companies to enter the market, and for us to be able to help that labor shortage that we're facing in agriculture."