Verdant Robotics runs precision ag farming as a service

Gabe Sibley, the CEO and co-founder of Verdant Robotics, is looking to make an immediate impact on the world through his work in precision agriculture.

Verdant Robotics, a company developing precision spraying solutions out of Silicon Valley, brings an array of technologies together to apply inputs with laser application down to the millimeter level.

Sibley has an extensive background as a technologist and roboticist. He received his bachelor's degree in math and computer science at Emory University, completed his doctorate in computer science at the University of Southern California, was a research scientist at Oxford University and a professor of computer science at George Washington University and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In 1997, he saw the work NASA was doing with the Mars rover missions, and realized this was a career field with wide-open opportunities. He eventually worked with JPL NASA for five years, primarily working on projects for the government, but found NASA's space and military applications required too much polishing time to remain cutting edge.

"You spend five to 10 years hardening technology that may be state of the art when you start, but what it means is that you're always five to 10 years behind the edge of the envelope," says Sibley.

As a professor he noticed that his students and postdocs began leaving to found and join startups like Surreal Vision, Canvas Robotics, and Zoox. Research funding shifted from government to companies like Google and Toyota that were investing in robotics, computer vision, and machine learning technologies, and he found himself "sucked in the maelstrom."

In 2014, Sibley was offered to co-found Zoox, a self-driving car company, that brought him out to Silicon Valley, where he became fully immersed in the world of self-driving car technology.

"I realized that self-driving cars were going to take a long time," says Sibley. "When you're releasing potentially lethal machines at scale, and into society, you have a responsibility to do that very carefully. The bar is high, and it takes time. I wanted to see my life's work have an impact sooner than that."

He branched out to start an autonomous sidewalk food delivery company, similar to Doordash or Postmates, but found that it required a lot of the same self-driving technology to run how he wanted it to. Around this time, some former colleagues introduced him to Curtis Garner, the co-founder, and "better half" of Verdant Robotics.

Collaborative precision solutions

Garner is the farmer DNA in the business, with experience running operations for Morning Star Tomatoes in California, says Sibley.

"Garner helped me understand the challenges in agriculture, and helped me understand how technology could help," says Sibley. "The way the labor market is shaping up, the way input costs are going, the amount of food we need to produce — none of this squares unless we find new solutions."

The duo launched Verdant in 2018 with a listening tour for the first six months, identifying the problems farmers are facing in their operations and what kind of technical solutions could be deployed to fix this, ultimately arriving at precision application. Verdant's 20- and 40-foot platforms can cover up to 4.2 acres per hour. This technology is capable of applying pollen on an apple blossom, or simultaneously applying herbicide and fertilizer on individual crops in the field — all based on different software directions, without the need to change hardware.

"This technology gave us the ability to put atoms on target, to give plants the nutrients with the direction an agronomist would want them to grow if they were out there applying the inputs with a paintbrush," says Sibley. "That gave us this really large canvas of jobs that we could do."

Technology in action

Verdant has now expanded to a team of around 50 people, comprising software developers, operations staff, and mechanical and electrical engineers. Rather than selling technology directly to farmers that would be outdated within a few years, Verdant sells its technology as a service.

"I think people delivering hardware today for sale are knowingly delivering an early version that's going to be a paperweight in a year," says Sibley. "We don't want to do that. We want to make sure we're there with skin in the game, so we are obligated to hit a guarantee for the growers."

Verdant's system clips on to the back of a tractor, to make autonomous agronomic decisions in real time. This system uses multi-view geometry camera systems, hyperspectral cameras, inertial sensors, light detection and ranging (lidar), kinematic sensors, and GPS when it's available. Through algorithms and mapping, this whole array of sensors infers the state of the outside world.

"Imagine constructing a 3D video game in real time, and then that 3D model — four dimensional, as well because you're tracking how it's changing over time — is then used to make decisions around what actions to take," says Sibley. "You have high-speed, aimable turrets that are essentially taking 20 to 30 shots per second to precisely apply inputs. It's like your agronomists are along for the ride, with squirt guns, making upwards of 120 shots per second, per bed."

Sibley says the company produces significant savings for farmers on day one, with 50% or greater ROI on some jobs, and a reduction of up to 95% less chemical inputs. This system doesn't just rely on the technology, however — a farmer's knowledge is the key to unlocking the full value of Verdant's technology, turning its service into a collaborative project.

Verdant's future

Verdant's services are at commercial availability, Sibley says they work with nearly 100% of the U.S. carrot market and many organic growers across the country. They are still working to perfect the technology, but are conducting trials for corn and soy application in Indiana and Iowa right now, citing the sheer number of acres as a challenge compared to orchard applications.

Sibley will be joining a panel, Farming as a Service: Addressing Labor Shortages with Robots, on March 15 at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in California. The summit takes place March 14-15, 2023, followed by the Future Food-Tech Summit from March 16-17. Registration for in-person and virtual access is available now. You can use the code FARMFRIEND for a 10% discount on in-person tickets. For more information, visit WorldAgriTechUSA.com.