May 20, 2011 Update

We've decided to form Blue River Technologies Inc. to pursue the Autonomow project idea.

We are very exited!.

Today is 5/20 and we're raising money through a 'Friends and Family' round using convertible notes and we are in the middle of incorporating using Fenwick and West. Our next goal next is to develop a prove of concept while continuing the customer development process.

We are looking for another senior computer vision / machine learning engineer to join us in the journey. If you or someone you know is interested, please contact us at: Heraud_Jorge@gsb.stanford.edu

We are also open to one more investor to participate in this round.

A big thank you goes to Steve, Ann and John for their teachings and well as to Thomas and our Mentors.

Team Autonomow - now Blue River Technologies

Many VCs in Ag - HighTech intersection!

Hi guys,

I’ve spent some time looking for VCs that have been investing in this intersection of Agriculture and HighTech where we are. I’ve found there several! I’m very enthused! I’ve had contacts or introductions to the first 4. Cort from UC Berkeley helped a lot!.

The more I think about it, the more I like trying to get our early money from 2-3 sources - someone in the Technology side, someone in the Ag side and perhaps someone from the Agri-Industry side (which might just be an advisor and not an actual investor).

Here is the list I have so far:

Paul Matteucci from US Venture Partners (Sand Hill Rd)
http://www.usvp.com/printable/bios/PaulM.html
http://www.usvp.com/html_vers/

Alex Kinnier from Khosla Ventures
http://www.khoslaventures.com/khosla/people.html

Andrew Williamson from Physics Venture (San Francisco)
http://www.physicventures.com/leadership/management/andrew-williamson-phd

Ronald Meeusen from Midpoint / Cultivian (Indiana)
http://www.midpointvc.com/

Also, I’m trying to figure out how to get in touch with One Earth Capital (Felton, CA).
They have invested in Marrone Bioinnovations (organic chemicals) and in Pure Sense, a company I know.
http://www.oneearthcapital.com/

Jorge

Email on Khosla Ventures and Marrone

Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 1:20 AM
To: Bingold, Joseph; Ford, Fred L'Ouverture; Redden, Lee Kamp; Vogt, Uwe
Subject: Catch- up

Hi guys, wanted to update you in a couple of areas:

1) The presentation with Oren went really well. He was enthusiastic about the idea. It turns out he is interested in agriculture including holding a record on the largest pumpkin in the world.

2) I met with a guy from Khosla Ventures, Alex Kinnier. I was introduced to him by some guys in a startup called SolumTech which measure Nitrogen in the soil. The combination of high tech and agriculture is still small, so Alex is an interesting contact. Although he asked me to keep him informed of our progress he seemed only somewhat interested only. He believes that in the future we’ll have selective organic herbicides to take care of weeds on organics (he is a chemical engineer). I’ve shot an email to Justin Grove for his thoughts on this theory.
Alex seemed to know a lot about Pat Marrone from Marrone Bio Innovations.
http://marronebioinnovations.com/index.html

I’ll invite Alex to the final presentation.

Jorge

Final business model canvas

Week 8 Presentation Slides -- Key Partnerships

Lasers!

We've been investigating what it takes to kill a plant with a laser. We aren't the first to consider this method of weed elimination. A well-regarded laboratory in Germany, LZH, began research on this topic last year.

http://www.lzh.de/en/publications/pressreleases/2010/unkraut

But LZH is not that far along and we need to know the feasibility much sooner.

First question: How much energy does it take to kill a weed? There is decent research on energy required to kill weeds based on propane torches. It takes 40kg of propane to clear 1 ha of early stage (0-2 true leaf) weeds. Assuming about .25 square cm for a small weed and some amazingly efficient heat transfer, this works out to about 5 Joules of energy to kill the weed.

How much energy will our laser require? Well, we estimate that the laser needs to kill the weed in about 10 milliseconds if our device is traveling at 1.5 mph. That means the laser needs to be pumping out 500watts of energy at the upper limit. In reality, lasers can do some fancy "slice n' dice" manuevers ... and therefore we can probably get away with a 100 watt device. We'll have to do some testing to confirm.

What wavelength to pursue? Again, testing is needed. Based on our discussions with the CEO of nLight (http://www.nlight.net/) we know that the most cost effective wavelength is 800-900nm with a cost of somewhere around $20/watt. But water (main ingredient in a weed) best absorbs light at higher frequencies - think microwaves. Is the improved absorbtion efficiency worth the extra cost? Testing is required.

In the end, we're looking at about $2,000 to $5,000 for the laser and another $10K or so for the scanning equipment. Question is, will it do the job? Probably, but only after a weed zapping test will we know for sure!

Partners and Cost Structure - Our Updated Business Canvas

Here you will find our updated business canvas. Truly remarkable how it has evolved over the term. It is amazing to see how the parts now interact so well together ... and equally amazing to observe how little we actually understood about our proposed business model at the beginning of the quarter.

Interview - Prof. David Slaughter, UC Davis

Interview with David Slaughter from UC Davis
Phone (530) 752-5553
Feb 15, 2011

Interviewed by Fred, Lee, Morgan, Jorge by phone

No current plans to create a company with this technology.

You need to eliminate some weeds, not necessarily all.
Technologies exist to remove all but a strip of 4 inches.
Weeds that are in the row and within these 4 inches are the ones we are talking about. They are the ones that compete the most with plants. The closer, the worse.

Crops:
Organic – because if they have a selective herbicide they are using it (unless it doesn’t work very well).
They use a simple green sensor.
High value crops where there are no selective herbicides.
Crops that have high hoeing bills – Any of the organic ones.
Hoeing bills depend a lot with the experience of farmers.

Farmgate value vs. spacing.
Regulatory side – elimination of herbicides,

PDF files for every CA crop by University of California.
Ag Econ department in UC Davis. Will have a link in their web page.
Karen Kolomski

Vision:
Hyperspectral camera
Pushbroom, gets a hypercube
Monochrome camera with transmission grading – which splits the light into the spectrum.
Each image in each direction has special information in one dimension and on the other you have your spectral information. Build a cube with 2D images
5-50K grading for system – camera and lenses
Depends on what part of the spectrum you are looking cost varies

Duncan 7-8K, 4 bands
How many spectral bands do you need? Need more than 6 and less than 30 bands.
The plan spectrum changes with stress response, which makes it be more than

Paper done in Belgium – sugar beets Els Verindst – good article on what not to do. Don’t use sunlight.
Paper in Denmark – turns out to be not very good.
Typically there are 3 bad weeds in a field.
Lot of the work they have done is in tomato – nightshade is worse weed, and tomato is

Biggest issue found not enough breadth of experience with environment.

Killing plants:
Electrocution – problem is on the point of contact you do a lot of damage – kill the leave, but not the ‘growing point of the plant’.

Hot organic oil – needs to get pretty good coverage of the plant, otherwise you don’t kill it.

They are testing:
Using a pneumatically powered knife – need to move the knife fast enough.
Spay system – they can get to 1x 1.5 cm of accuracy.

Problem needs to be solved
Problem farmers are willing to pay for
Success is close – depends on how you define success. So far success has been

They are Interested in joint proposals.
Universities, or matching money.

For next meeting, he’ll want to see an agenda before having a meeting.
{Note, my feeling is he is getting a bit nervous about us. Perhaps he’s been thinking about doing a company like us. Could we somehow get him to join us instead of competing with us?}

Some more photos of CarrotBot going south.

Carrot-bot loaded up in the van.



Freds watch after loading up carrot bot. Notice it is the 2:15 when it is dark.
Morgan, Fred and Lee are happy to go home now.



The Van driving down. Morgan loading new code to the motor driver boards. Drive-Brake vs. Drive-Coast code.



The team at the field with the carrot bot



Carrot-Bot in the field taking data. Look at those shadows.



Carrot-Bot before disassemble



Carrot-Bot after disassemble before being moved for storage.

Presentation Week 7 - Revenue Model

Business Plan Canvas - Week 7

CarrotBot Makes Its Debut!

The following videos document CarrotBot's voyage into the organic carrot fields near Kettleman City, CA.

First up - CarrotBot emerges from the cargo van.

This video gives a quick lay of the land.

And now ... defining the problem. Here's the problem facing the computer vision engineer.

Can you spot the difference between a carrot and a weed?

Workers in the field ... a very tough job.

Finally ... CarrotBot rolling through the field collecting data.

Team Autonomow visits World Ag Expo

Solex - Robocrop dealer

Solex – dealer for Robocrop,
Chad Fountain, Product Specialist

220 S Jefferson, Dixon, CA (close to Davies)
Phone (707) 678 5533

In person interview by Joe and Jorge

We asked questions to the sales rep for Robocrop

Products:
They have two products
• Robocrop Precision Guidance for row crop cultivators. Uses a camera to shift a hitch so cultivators can cut very close to the plant rows. (This is the system that Justin bought)
• Robocrop InRow (this the one with the turning blades)

Robocrop In-Row:
• We got a flyer with some amount of technical information – wavelets and kalman filters, 25 frames per second. (why would they put this info in a flyer???). It’s posted in dropbox.
• Pictures are posted there too.
• They are buying this from UK. They are considering manufacturing steel part shere.
• They sell systems - they have sold a few systems already.
• They have a monitor that mounts in the cab that shows what the cameras see and an overlay showing if plant has been recognized.
• Each camera has a 60 inch visual range, so you need one per each 40 inch bed which contains two beds.
• Prices:
o 8 row system: $171,685 (for 4 x 40 beds)
o 4 row system: $127,325
o 2 row system: $106,479
o 15 row system: $246,816
• Support: They train for a day and then they typically support by phone. They claim it’s simple.
o Camera pointing angle seems was the main adjustment he talked about. Can be done by connecting a PC or measuring.

Interview with Charles Sweat

Charles Sweat, CEO Earthbound Organics
Phone 831 623 7880
charles@ebfarm.com

In person interview with Jorge Heraud, Feb 10, 2011

Earthbound organics is the largest producer of organic vegetables.
Revenues of 500M. Produces almost all vegetables. Heavy into lettuce and salads (spring mix), broccoli spinach and now apples. They don’t grow tomatoes. They buy carrots from Bolthouse.

About 80% of their sales are packaged foods. They grow 35K acres, 10K directly and the rest through contract with about 150 farmers of different sizes.

The grow, process and package.

Most of the organic vegetables consumed in the US are consumed at home. 10% of packaged salads sold in the US are organic. In restaurants, less than 0.1% of the vegetables are organic.
Organic vegetables are about $0.25 –$0.50 than conventional. When the crisis hit in 2008 the share of organic fell, but has now recovered. Consumers are price sensitive.

About 5% of the vegetables consumed in the US are organic. (30% in Europe and < 2% in Japan).

The head of the growing part of their business is the Senior VP of Agriculture, Otto Kramm. He gave me his number. He would know exact costs for producing.

Charles opinion is they have weeds more or less under control, so his costs are not outrageous. They employ the following techniques:
- Most of what they grow directly is in Yuma Valley (southern AZ) and they use a technique called solarization where they cover the fields during the summer with a plastic which creates a greenhouse effect and rises the temperature to 140F + for extended periods. This kills weeds before they germinate. They don’t have weeds for months after they do this
- They don’t allow weeds to grow, killing them when young. After doing this for 3-5 years the weed pressure is significantly lower.
- During these initial years they grow broccoli. The combination of the thick canopy of broccoli and solarization, is very potent. Weeds don’t get a chance.
- He said Otto Kramm would be able to give numbers
- Insects are a bigger problem for him now

He likes innovation. They designed a spinach harvester that uses a laser to cut them and a vacuum mechanism to pull them up.

Week 6 Presentation - Nearly Final

Below are the slide images for the Week 6 Presentation.  blogger.com does not provide the ability to embed PowerPoint presentations ... as far as we can tell.

Business Canvas Update

John Deere Dealer Interview

Nick – Fisher Farm and Lawn – McMinnville, OR – Sales Rep
Phone interview with Joe Bingold

1. Please describe your relationship with manufacturers:
a. How do you decide what equipment you will carry?
i. What the farmer will need is dependent on who can supply that to us competitively for what you are getting. Classic supply/demand
ii. Will order lots of implements on an as needed basis – too much variability and one-offs to keep in stock.
iii. Some suppliers will loan demos – this is huge for sales.
iv. Other dealers can see what folks have in stock and work together in the dealer network.

b. What kind of margins do you get on the equipment?
i. 25% is an average amount.

c. Do manufacturers offer you other discounts or incentives?
i. John Deere will offer certain incentives at some point – but most discounts are getting a cut on the dealer’s own margin.

d. Do you have buy-back agreements with the manufacturers?
i. Not that he has seen.

e. Do you have exclusivity arrangements?
i. Tractor wise – John Deere is all that they sell. Have quite a few companies that they deal with on the implementation side.


2. Please describe your relationship with farmers:
a. How do you get an understanding for what equipment farmers want?
i. Seeing the farmers quite often. In various manners. Service, sales, parts, delivery, etc.

b. Do you host demonstrations?
i. Yes. People don’t want to spend the money ahead of time. Supplier will let you have a demo machine. And they will bring it to their farm.
ii. More and more demos are being used to sell the product.

c. Do you attend agricultural shows?
i. Yes, reps from the wider dealer network.

d. Do you provide service/maintenance for equipment?
i. Most important part is service. Supplier has to be able to supply parts and get questions answered quickly. This is HUGE! They wouldn’t sell a product that doesn’t have that kind of service.

3. What is your advice on how a new company producing an innovative product can sell equipment to farmers?
a. Get the machine out there and in the field to demo. Want a customer who has some tolerance to hiccups.
b. Go to some dealers and see if they would be willing to keep one around to demo.

More Dealer Interviews

Jack Seifer - Cascade Farm Machinery – Manager and Sales Rep
Silverton, OR – 503-873-5355
Phone interview with Joe Bingold

1. Please describe your relationship with manufacturers:
a. How do you decide what equipment you will carry?
i. Get feedback from farmers. But get more insight from the manufacturer – distributer. The manufacturer is studying the market so they trust the manufacturer’s recommendations.

b. What kind of margins do you get on the equipment?
i. List price with a discount goes to the dealer. 20-30%.

c. Do manufacturers offer you other discounts or incentives?
i. Kubota Tractors is the only type of tractor they carry. Hard to serve two masters – so happy with just one company. Stock the equipment that is applicable to the local farmers. For equipment that is useful but not made by Komodo, they will use short lines from other manufactures if needed and receive this equipment via distributers. Certain short lines are small enough that they go straight from manufacturer to dealer – they have a direct contract with Woods Equipment in Illinois and the profit from the deal.

d. Do you have buy-back agreements with the manufacturers?
i. Yes – but only through the state dealer. Manufacturer does not provide buy-back.

e. Do you have exclusivity arrangements?
i. Yes, with the manufacturer’s line of equipment. John Deere is notoriously the most rigid in this regard.

2. Please describe your relationship with farmers:
a. How do you get an understanding for what equipment farmers want?
i. Just sort of know. Talk with the farmers … know the business.

b. Do you host demonstrations?
i. Don’t do a lot of on the farm selling. Hard for an individual dealer to put on a demonstration. Cascade Farm Machinery has been around long enough that people know about them and just come when they need equipment. They know their territory and don’t need to do much promotion.

c. Do you attend agricultural shows?
i. Yes, participate in a couple of these every year.

d. Do you provide service/maintenance for equipment?
i. A big part of why they keep customers is their local service. Farmers know that they will be there to help them.

3. What is your advice on how a new company producing an innovative product can sell equipment to farmers?
a. Find a distributer and use their expertise.

Carrot Bot

I would like to give an evolution of the mechanical portions of carrot bot and what lynch pins allow a robust research grade platform to come together rather quickly.
1. 20 hour days. (In a weekend you can work as much as a full time job! Hell, if you include Thursday and Friday, you can work two weeks, now that is efficiency.)
2. McMaster-Carr 10AM delivery. (On Wednesday night you can get the idea to build a robot. On thursday you can order parts, get them by friday, test them out, notice something doesn't work and find a local dealer for alternatives.
3. LaserCam. (If you don't have a part just cut it out of wood, Hell even an ANSI 41 54 tooth sprocket (list price $36) can be cut in minutes for a few dollars.
4. Bike parts. They are everywhere, but some of them are broken. (no bikes were stolen in the creation of this project.)
6. Good engineers. (I don't want to tote my own horn, but...)
7. Excess stock of parts. (Everyone needs a few parts on hand every now and then.)
8. Did I mention 20 hour days. I might be delirious at this point.


Wednesday Night.



Thursday Night.



Friday Night.



Saturday Night.



Sunday Night.