Blue River Technology was founded by Stanford graduate students Lee Redden and Jorge Heraud in 2011 and was acquired by Fortune 500 John Deere for $305 million in 2017.
Blue River Technology specializes in building and deploying the cutting edge of advanced algorithms, sensors, computer hardware, and actuators to farm equipment. The company is driven to reduce chemical use in food production by accelerating agricultural methods through the use of robotics. The equipment can detect individual plants, optimize, and act at centimeter resolution bringing a new paradigm to precision ag, plant-by-plant care.
“Blue River is leveraging three important trends: machine learning, data-driven agriculture and robotics. This approach has the potential to revolutionize how we produce food in the near future.” - Matt Ocko, founding partner of Data Collective Venture Capital
Blue River Technology aims to overcome the agricultural industry’s dependence on herbicides and pesticides through innovation and technology. This method and machinery enable farmers to nurture individual plants instead of treating each plant the same way. And alongside the reduction of chemical use, environmental and food contamination is a focus, which is not often possible in current farming methods.
“Blue River is taking a very innovative and practical approach to solving one of the world’s top problems – how to produce more food in a responsible way. I’m impressed by how quickly the company brought its first product to market, and how successful it’s been.” - Vinod Khosla, Venture Capitalist
• Machine learning
• Computer vision
• GPU/CPU compute
• Rugged electronic packaging
• Precise actuators
The now Deere's See & Spray™ is a system that allows farmers to target individual weeds in a field, which reduces the use of chemicals and drastically increases the number of crops that can be used. Blue River Technology's initial goal with the machine was to reduce herbicide usage by 80-90% which would result in thousands of dollars in savings for farmers.
Lettuce Bot targets and selectively kills weeds on sight with 98% accuracy, using its vision algorithm. The machine is attached to a tractor and rolled through fields to thin lettuce of excess plants by either slicing the weed down, injecting minimal doses of herbicide, or spraying a potent fertilizer, that allows it to grow into full lettuce heads.
