FoA 340: Building farm-ready robots with Hunter Jay of Ripe Robotics

<p>Sound Ag: https://www.sound.ag/ </p><p>Ripe Robotics: https://www.riperobotics.com/ </p><p>Today’s episode features Hunter Jay, CEO and cofounder of Ripe Robotics, a startup working on autonomous harvesting of fruit. The prototype is in small scale commercial trials, and will be ready to scale up in 2023 &amp; 2024. The company has 2 commercial trial partners and another 30 companies on its waitlist, who spend a combined $85m USD on picking annually.</p><p>Most of you have probably heard about robotic apple picking startups in the past, some that are still going and others that have failed. But one thing I really appreciate about today’s episode is Ripe’s commitment to keeping costs low and iterating fast. I think this is what it’s going to take to find automation that works for specialty crops like stone fruit.&nbsp;</p><p>Hunter is a software engineer, and has a particular focus on artificial intelligence. He previously founded a mobile game startup, and whenI asked him about that company is where i’ll drop you into today’s conversation with Hunter Jay of Ripe Robotics. </p><p><br></p>