About

Advanced Intelligent Robotics is a knowledge-intensive company focusing on critical innovation in the field of autonomous mobile & cyber physical systems, as well as on research, technological development & innovation activities (RD&I) and the commercial exploitation of high-value intellectual property. We help farmers minimise use of costly pesticides, fertilisers, water & energy and increase the quantity & quality of harvest yield in line with EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), EU & FAO's Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) and UN's Sustainable Development Goals. We minimise expenses & adverse impact of agricultural production and help overcome climate change issues. We address the needs of crop inspection, early detection & treatment of plant diseases. We apply high-tech (autonomous robotics, AI, ML, satellite imagery, GIS & IoT) to detect & treat diseases at the source of the epidemic before they are visible to the human eye, eliminating the need to spray with pesticide the complete cultivation, which has enormous cost to the producers and the environment. We provide technology for selective fertilization & irrigation as well as selective harvesting, achieving significant cost savings on plant protection, cultivation and crop management. We offer information and enable optimal approaches on crop management, disease control, irrigation, fertilization & harvesting. We increase the efficiency of food production, while reducing the amount of energy expenditure to that end.

Solution & Product

We provide holistic Agriculture 4.0 System as a Service. This way we minimise the cost of entry to our clients and reduce their risk and the actual or perceived cost of entry to our tech. Drones, rovers, satellite imagery and IoT sensors are used to collect multi-spectral images (with extended colour pallet, similar to some insect's extended visual perception) and measurements of the crop. Data processing algorithms, Computer Vision techniques and Artificial Intelligence are than used to extract useful information such as plant disease, growth problems, lack of nutrients and produce maturity for harvesting. Other technologies allow for the generation of accurate and precise maps of the findings, enabling the communication of the exact location of the detected issues to other technological systems and to humans. Other, heavier lift capability drones, then fly above the affected areas using an automatically calculated path adopted to the nature, location and extend of the problem and selectively apply pesticide spraying or fertilisers as needed and only to the areas in need. When allowed by terrain conditions, robotic rovers can also be deployed to perform the same task. One aspect of our solution is irrigation control by using IoT actuators and sensors. Another is automated spraying and fertilising. We also collect and incorporate meteorological data, satellite imagery and weather models to achieve reducing irrigation wastage by 20-25%.

Innovation & Scalability

Innovation stems from optimal agriculture 4.0 implementation made possible by our dedicated team of solution-domain-experts in the field of Engineering, Robotics, AI, Cloud, IoT and Big Data working in close collaboration with problem-domain-experts in the field of agronomy, environmental science, toxicology and biology. There is also business innovation since we offer the system as a complete Hardware as a Service solution. HaaS (hardware as a service) and Cloud Computing business models combined with Resource Sharing/Pooling models, afford us lower operation costs & greater flexibility as system operators, providing optimal capital efficiency. Full automation allows for scalability and entry to new national markets by small dedicated national teams. We have designed our MVP with extreme scalability in focus since it is only based on pre-existing infrastructure (Satellite, Cloud, telecoms, app). We then move on by offering IoT farm conditions monitoring over app and smart fields mapping by analysing Copernicus satellite & drone imagery. Later we move to full services. We charge setup fees and provide services through subscription. There are initial setup charges, subscription fees for services, human expert support charges. We charge per land area covered, services and cultivation period. Our business builds around an environmental cause, ensuring economical and social benefits for all involved parties and makes its adoption attractive, feasible and economically viable.

Traction & achievements

We have set up an associate network to sell our services to their clients in three geographical regions: Crete, Messinia, Mytilini. Our associates enjoy the professional trust of our prospective clients for many years. We participated as exhibitors in 84th ΔΕΘ and Agrotika. We are part of ICT Invent (NTUA), Ennovation (AUEB), NBG Seeds (National Bank of Greece) and Ok!Thess acceleration programs and have taken part, among others, in “the egg” accelerator (Eurobank) and Orange Grove acceleration program (Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands), all parts of the Hellenic startup ecosystem. We are also in Copernicus Accelerator (EU) for satellite imagery applications. We are currently assigned four senior mentors and two coaches. We participate in a consortium (Along with the Agricultural University of Athens, a research institute and other companies) which was awarded funding in 2021 for an Agri-Tech joint industrial research and development project from the General Secretary of Research and Technology, ΓΓΕΤ. Awards: European Commission, European Business Awards for the Environment 2020: European level (EU) Business Process Rising Star distinction. European Commission, European Business Awards for the Environment 2020: National level (EL) Business Process Award. Greenathon Awards 2020, organised by the Hellenic Ministry of the Environment, Awarded the 2nd place. Green Tech Challenge Awards 2019, organised by National Technical University of Athens: Awarded the 3rd place.

Team & Why Us

Besides the founder and the startup team members, we hired five employees in November 2020 and will soon expand with two more hires (business and administration). We have the technological competence and completeness necessary to succed. Our full-time team was formed specifically to solve the task at hand. We share a common vision and passion for technological applications and we formed our team specifically based on it’s members complimentary skills and expertise. Together we cover all the scientific, engineering & technical aspects of our project. We also have experience in b2b sales of technology products, management & project management. The technologists of our team bring along extensive experience in autonomous robotics, IoT, Land surveying and other cutting edge fields. We are all aware industry must change its ways for the better in a financially viable way. We share common values, vision and passion for sustainability through technology, wanting to contribute with our work and our knowledge to the realization of our cause. Our vision is to apply the most recent “fruits” of the human intellect and the most advanced technological attainments of the human technology, in agricultural food production, bringing equilibrium to the human, environment and civilization triangle. We aim in ensuring food abundance, preserving human health and making agricultural production sustainable for the long run, as the basis for peace and the conservation of human civilization.

Funding Needs

Our current VC ask is 650.000 Euros to expand our operations in the entire country. Having successfully sourced non-equity funds from various sources, we are developing our business and refine our technology. At present we have around 18 months of runway. We are also strongly interested in equity investment from smaller investors under the provisions of Elevate Greece legislation. Our participation to various national businesses development and research programs has already awarded us numerous grants. Our participation to the National Employment Agency (ΟΑΕΔ) programs has awarded us an employment grant to cover the baseline employment cost of five employees for a total duration of 23 months on average each. Following the participation of our company to a local bank’s business competition and having successfully completed their incubation program, we have already secured a businesses development loan with comparatively favourable terms. Further grant applications both in national and European programs are currently under evaluation. We have calculated our further Series-A funds to 2.4M Euros to expand our operations to two more EU countries.