Upside Robotics co-founder and CEO Jana Tian
Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
WOODSTOCK — Imagine small robots fertilizing corn fields, gradually and discretely, working tirelessly amid the towering stalks through the entire growing season. Each about the size of a beefy tool box on four wheels, they travel between the corn rows at one metre per second, flowing out a small amount of nitrogen onto the root zones as they pass by. They automatically fetch more fertilizer when empty and recharge while filling up. They then drive back to resume their work, ’round the clock.
These “live-in-the-field” robots are being tested now in Southwestern Ontario and the developers say the technology could cut a farmer’s nitrogen bill in half with no yield reduction when compared with the usual fertilizer application methods.
Upside Robotics was founded in California’s Silicon Valley two years ago but has since moved to Waterloo. The first trials of the company’s ‘Maize Runner’ robots took place on 1,000 corn acres at seven Waterloo Region farms this season, company co-founder and CEO Jana Tian said.
The coming corn harvest will be key to proving if the robots can effectively cut fertilizer usage by as much as the company believes is possible. If true, the payback should be pretty quick for farmers embracing this technology, according to the company.
One Maize Runner can handle 100 acres, covering the area over the course of a week, at one acre per hour. A 1,000-acre corn plot would require 10 robots.
Tian described it as the “swarm approach” to field work. In other words, multiple small, autonomous robots — each relatively inexpensive — work together and perform tasks over time, at all hours of the day. This is a sea change from human operators having to handle a task as quickly as possible using big, expensive machinery. That’s also a compromise approach when it comes to fertilizer. As much as two-thirds of conventionally-applied fertilizer never makes it to the plant because it’s lost to run-off or directly into the atmosphere after being spread near the start of the season. So more fertilizer needs to be applied up front to account for that.
Having robots gradually apply the fertilizer cuts usage while allowing the plant to physically take up the same amount of nitrogen through the season. The robots, each equipped with a 44-litre tank, “spoon feed” nitrogen to the crop, she said. The little robots are competition to drones and require no human intervention.
Tian said they hope to sell the units for about CDN $20,000 apiece starting in 2026. More testing will take place at an expanded roster of 20 to 25 Ontario farms in 2025, she said.
The Maize Runner is manufactured in Waterloo. Its stainless steel body is welded at a Mennonite shop in Kitchener.
“I really don’t see a future for agriculture without small, autonomous robots,” she said.
Co-founder and chief technology officer Sam Dugan pointed out that the Maize Runner enjoys one of the main advantages of an airborne drone, while working on the ground. At only 24 inches wide, it can access and treat a mature field multiple times without damaging or trampling the crop, like an airborne drone. However, it doesn’t cost as much, doesn’t require a human operator, doesn’t crash and can legally use all of the chemicals that are currently off limits to drones, he said.
Upside Robotics co-founder and chief technology officer Sam Dugan.
