Case Study: Small Robot Company achieves greener, more profitable farming with Ubuntu

Small Robot Company sows the seeds for greener and more profitable farming

Small Robot Company (SRC) is a UK agri‑tech startup tackling the economic and environmental problems caused by heavy tractors, rising farm costs and stagnant yields. With the cost of running a cereal farm up 85% in 25 years and around 20% of produce wasted at field edges, SRC’s vision is to replace tractors with lightweight autonomous robots that farm plant-by-plant to reduce waste, lower inputs and improve yields.

SRC built prototype robots—Tom (monitoring), Dick (feeding/weeding) and Harry (precision planting)—coordinated by Wilma AI, and used Ubuntu across desktops, cloud and Raspberry Pi robots to accelerate development and integration of AI, robotics and cloud services. The approach has attracted trial partnerships (including Waitrose), raised £1.2m in crowdfunding, and SRC estimates the robots can cut costs by 60% and boost revenues by 40%, with large‑scale commercial trials planned for 2021 involving 100 farms.

Small Robot Company

Joe Allnutt

Chief Executive Officer