Rowbot secures National Science Foundation funding to improve in-season nitrogen solution

The Rowbot team is excited to announce that we have secured a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research award from the National Science Foundation. We have long been certain that small ag robots will shine when they combine work with data. What we mean by this is that there is a “win-win” opportunity to collect data, process it in real time, and then use the analytical result to improve the quality of the work performed on farmer fields.

This SBIR award from NSF is focused on the short-term research required to commercialize the data portion of our patent protected, in-season nitrogen (N) solution. Producers who apply N during the growing season (a best practice) and want to adjust rates based on the specifics of the unfolding growing season (rainfall, growing conditions) can use a commercially-available model—such as Adapt-N—to estimate up-to-date N predictions. We are extending the value of using a model by stressing small plots on “every field, every season” to ensure that model parameters are correctly set, or to determine the best parameter set through simulation. This will eventually be conducted on-the-fly at a nominal incremental cost to the producer who will stand to reap the economic and stewardship benefits of improved N management.