Saga Robotics
Saga Robotics has developed the world leading agricultural robot, Thorvald. The Thorvald platform emerged from the robotics group at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. By working closely with farmers, the main challenges for producers, both in Norway and internationally, were identified; we saw the need to introduce robots to the agricultural domain for solving critical issues such as labour shortages, sustainability and yield security. With this foundation, Saga Robotics was established as a company committed to delivering autonomous services for the agricultural industry. Saga Robotics combined a robust mechanical design with intelligent autonomy, and the world`s leading agricultural platform, Thorvald, was born. Saga Robotics is based in Norway and the UK and is part of The RAS-berry project which is the largest research project on agricultural robotics in the world.
Company details
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- Business Type:
- Manufacturer
- Industry Type:
- Agriculture
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
About us
Thorvald has the ability to improve current farming practices in a variety of ways. Tasks requiring manual labour, such as strawberry picking, are made easier by reducing the need to find labourers. This is especially useful in areas struggling to find agricultural labour such as the USA and UK. In addition, Thorvald is small and lightweight compared with modern farming equipment. This means that Thorvald has a small impact on the environment and the quality of farmland due to a reduction in soil compaction. Thorvald can also improve the efficiency and profitability of a farm by doing tasks such as mechanical weeding with machine vision. Robotic weeding using light treatment and precision spraying reduces the amount of pesticides required which is not only a financial bonus but also helps to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. Finally, agriculture is one of the major industries yet to adopt data analysis techniques to help improve production and efficiency. Farming operations can be improved dramatically by systematic data collection, a task Thorvald can undertake simultaneously with other tasks.
Our mission
To transform farming into a service sector, making agriculture more profitable with reduced risk to the farmer, more environmentally friendly, and to produce cheaper, better and healthier food.
Our vision
To become a leading provider of robotic and knowledge-based farming services.
What makes us different?
Many agricultural robotics companies have created specialized robots that can each do a single task in one type of environment. Thorvald, however, is modular and can be easily assembled to operate in different types of farms and to work with a variety of tools. We have a partner model that permits others to build tools for the robot allowing us to develop applications rapidly. For these reasons we will be able to produce robots on a large scale at an affordable cost. We will be a strong competitor, both with standard farming practices and with other small specialized robots developed for agriculture.