Fieldin acquires Midnight Robotics to advance its autonomous platforms

Fieldin takes a step forward in autonomous farming as it announces its acquisition of Midnight Robotics. This acquisition will create a brand-new sensor-based platform with driving technologies that improve day-to-day management of the farm.

Many farms face no end of challenges, from labor shortages to water pollution, and Fieldin has found the need for farmers to optimize farming operations and maximize efficiency. The addition of Midnight Robotics allows Fieldin to utilize its technology to gather farming data, analyze it, and offer farmers guidance and suggestions on how to execute their plans using driverless machinery, all from one dashboard.

"Many people think an autonomous tractor is some magic solution. At the end of the day, it is just machinery. Your autonomous farm can only be as good as your farm management data. That's why this acquisition is driving the autonomous farming revolution forward," says Boaz Bachar, CEO and co-founder of Fieldin. "Over the past eight years we've digitized hundreds of farms and over 10,000 tractors and pieces of farming equipment and amassed a trove of invaluable data that can offer insights into best practices in farm management. By acquiring Midnight Robotics, we're helping farmers close the loop from insight to autonomous action, so they know exactly what they need to do and execute it autonomously, all through the same platform."

Midnight Robotics was founded by Yonatan Horovitz and Edo Reshef, with the core of the company focused on producing a retrofit kit that allows any tractor to become autonomous using LiDAR perception algorithms, enabling a robust and reliable solution for autonomous operation and precise execution.

"It's not enough to have great agricultural data or great autonomous technology — you need to have both to make autonomous farming a reality. What's so powerful about this merger is the combination of Fieldin's farming data collection, which includes over 49 million hours' worth of tractor driving, with our driverless technology expertise," says Yonatan Horovitz, co-founder of Midnight Robotics.

Integrating this technology into Fieldin's existing systems takes less than one day. Fieldin has already set up this combined autonomous farming system in major farms across California and has plans to expand its end-to-end systems in the coming months.

Currently, 30% of U.S. lettuce crops and 20% of global almond crops are run through Fieldin's platform. Fieldin works closely with leading growers that have both high-value crops and broadacre (row crop) fields, and is always evaluating whether its platform is suitable for other crops.