Fondazione Social Venture Giordano Dell’Amore

Agrorobotica

Agrorobotica is an innovative start-up that was created in June 2017, specializing in precision agriculture and farming management. It has developed SpyFly, a pest trap to be installed in the field that is able to: photograph, recognize and count harmful insects and transmit the results obtained in real time via smartphone and website: of benefit to environmental sustainability, the agro-food chain and consumer health. Agrorobotica is supported by Fondazione Social Venture Giordano Dell’Amore – the strategic and operational Foundation of Fondazione Cariplo in the impact investing sector – which invested €252,000 in the enterprise.

Agrobotica’s flagship product is SpyFly, a robotic trap that uses sophisticated AI algorithms to attract, capture and recognize pests and parasitic insects that are harmful to crops.

Each Spyfly is powered independently by solar panels and doubles as a weather gauge, collating information on the evolution of insects in relation to climatic conditions.

Thanks to the development of this technology, the farmer receives warning messages in the event of the presence of harmful insects, which enables prompt and effective intervention only when strictly necessary.

SpyFly is equipped with proprietary auto-adaptive algorithms that combine the data collected from insects that are caught with that detected by the sensors installed. The development of the Artificial Intelligence it is equipped with is aimed at combining the data collected from multiple traps in order to create forecast models that are able to self-learn based on the location they are installed in. The advent of “SpyFly” represents a real revolution in the agricultural world as regards the monitoring of the state of health of crops and the integrated control the pests that afflict them.

Look at the video:

 

Impact

Contrasting food waste caused by crop loss and a reduction in the improper use of pesticides in crops are two of the main positive environmental impact factors generated by Agrorobotica. One of the main problems that affects crops is the damage caused by parasitic insects: depending on the type of crop and the vintage, crop loss – particularly of vines and olive or fruit trees – fluctuates on average between 20% and 50%, resulting in a substantial waste of food and resources. The greatest problem for farmers lies mainly in the inability to promptly detect the presence of harmful insects and to identity them. This results in late interventions, with consequent loss of crops and, not infrequently, the improper and massive use of insecticides that are harmful to both the environment and human health.
Foundation year
2017
Legal status
Innovative Start-up
Site
Scarlino (Grosseto)
Sector
Agritech
In portfolio since
2020
Type of investment
Equity, Shareholder financing
Website: www.agrorobotica.it