Serving tens of millions of mu-times a year, Juewu Technology makes agricultural mechanization more refined | Early-stage project

Author | Ye Danxuan

Editor | Yuan Silai

When agricultural mechanization first entered China, the first tractor brought the concept of "farming without oxen" to the fields in China.

The arrival of the era of agricultural mechanization and intelligence has led to more and more new agricultural machinery and equipment entering the agricultural production process. Along with this new agricultural trend is another sharp fact: the agricultural production population is declining. According to the information from the Third National Agricultural Census, the current agricultural labor force is basically born before 1990, and mainly consists of the elderly born before 1960. According to scholars' estimates, by 2030, China's agricultural labor force will decrease by 20% or more.

Accompanying the problem of an aging agricultural population is the lack of professional talents in China's agricultural production process. In traditional agricultural production, the four links of plowing, sowing, management, and harvesting, "management" is the one that lasts the longest and has a relatively low degree of intervention by agricultural machinery equipment. The field management link involves many aspects and complex operations, and the crop yield and the sustainable development of the plot are inseparable from the farmers' professional operations in this link.

In the field management process, the fine operation ability of agricultural machinery is crucial. When traditional agricultural machinery equipment participates in field management, manual operations such as changing rows and turning on the machine-cultivated paths are required, which is prone to crushing vegetation and causing mechanical damage to the plants. At the same time, in the process of spraying pesticides with traditional agricultural machinery equipment, due to the lack of precise operation ability, the problems of fertilizer abuse and waste of agricultural materials are prominent, and the soil consolidation is serious.

Agricultural robots capable of precise operations have become the most urgent need for the "new farmers" remaining on the farmland.

Hardcore noticed that the "Hechu" agricultural robot (model Function Robot, FR) launched by Juewu Technology is operating in the vast cotton fields of millions of mu in Xinjiang, and has received many favorable comments from local farmers on platforms such as Douyin and Video Account.

Juewu Technology was established in Shenzhen, Guangdong in 2020, and is one of the earliest robot companies in the world to directly provide agricultural planting services through the mRaaS (modularized Robot as a Service) model. Its core product, the "Hechu" agricultural robot, adopts the world's first modular deformable robot system of Juewu Technology, combined with artificial intelligence, autonomous driving in farmland, and big data technology, to provide global agricultural customers with zero-carbon, pure-electric, digital, and unmanned "plowing, sowing, management, and harvesting" full-process agricultural services, and has currently achieved large-scale application in Xinjiang farmland.

Different from the whole machine sales model commonly used by agricultural machinery enterprises in the market, Juewu Technology chooses to enter the market with socialized service operations, committed to solving the demand peak that occurs intensively during the agricultural operation season. As long as farmers place orders on the agricultural service mini-program by themselves, they can make an appointment for professional plant protection services.

When the Juewu team conducted research in Xinjiang, they found that the timeliness of agriculture is very strong, but currently, farmers' purchase of a single agricultural machinery can only be dedicated to a single planting link, resulting in a very low utilization rate of agricultural machinery equipment. "For example, in key links such as weeding and cotton picking, the time window left for farmers is very short. You may need to remove all the weeds within 7-10 days, and the cotton picker only works for 40 days each year." Song Jiayin, the founder of Juewu Technology, told Hardcore that the socialized service operations provided by Juewu can solve this industry pain point, and more professional and refined systems and robots are used to provide agricultural services to farmers, which is more efficient for agricultural production.

In addition to the advantages of the agricultural service model, the "Hechu" robot of Juewu Technology also solves the problem of poor operation quality of the existing plant protection methods in actual agricultural operations, and achieves an effect of increasing the yield by 10%-15% by improving the quality of pest and disease control during the crop growth period.

Currently, the sizes of plant protection robots on the market are basically fixed. However, in actual agricultural production, the plant spacing and height are disordered. In the existing plant protection methods, ground-based agricultural machinery has problems such as difficult manual driving and serious mechanical damage; new types of aerial equipment have problems such as insufficient water volume and serious pesticide drift. It is worth noting that none of the existing plant protection equipment can achieve precise pesticide application.

In the research and development process, the Juewu team, in accordance with the principle of deep modular design, optimizes the components of different functions and different levels, and flexibly combines multiple robot modalities that can automatically deform to achieve a robot system that can be quickly assembled like Lego. For example, the "Hechu" deformable robot (Code Name: Function Robot) can adapt to different crops and planting patterns through different modal deformations in the field scene. The robot adopts autonomous driving, omnidirectional flexible wheel-side drive independent wire control technology and adaptive deformation technology, which can achieve 360° movement, sideways, backward, and row change, almost achieving zero mechanical damage.

At the same time, the "Hechu" robot adopts a modular air supply system to achieve targeted variable pesticide application at different plant growth stages, precisely penetrating the parts that need to be sprayed. Under the precise operation mode of the "Hechu" robot, the pesticide application amount is as low as 0.015 grams per mu, saving more than 90% of the pesticide amount compared with the traditional mode, reducing the land damage caused by pesticide abuse, and also saving the input of agricultural materials for farmers.

It is worth noting that before the cotton in Xinjiang is harvested, defoliants need to be sprayed on the plants. In the past agricultural production, when using other equipment to spray defoliants, because the cotton plants are in the period of the most vigorous and tallest growth, the pesticides are often difficult to cover the middle and lower leaves, resulting in green cotton leaves remaining on the plants and becoming impurities in the finished cotton. At the same time, the penetration power of traditional spraying equipment is insufficient, and the defoliation effect is not good. It is often necessary to repeat the pesticide application on the cotton plants, causing damage to the cotton fibers and affecting the quality grade of the finished cotton.

Song Jiayin revealed that the application of the "Hechu" robot in the cooperative base in Xinjiang precisely solves the problem of the abuse of cotton defoliants in the local area for the past two decades, greatly improving the quality of local cotton harvest. It not only has a good reputation among farmers in Xinjiang, with a repurchase rate close to 100%, but also attracts foreign customers from places like Brazil.

"Currently, agriculture worldwide is facing the problem of an aging population, and the users of agricultural machinery products are also becoming a new generation of farmers and farm owners." To seize this new generation of farmers, precise operations and efficient and professional socialized services will be the two most important core competencies. "We believe this is a good era for agricultural robots and an opportunity for Juewu Technology," Song Jiayin told Hardcore.

Recently, Juewu Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. announced that it has completed the Pre-A round of financing. This round of financing is led by Zhejiang Robot Industry Group and also received a follow-on investment from Shenzhen Investment Control East Sea Investment Co., Ltd. This round of financing will mainly be used to promote the research and development process of Juewu Technology's modular robot system, accelerate product iterations, and further promote the promotion of the mRaaS (Robot as a Service) model in the field of agricultural socialized services.

Provided by 36Kr

Provided by 36Kr