HayBeeSee

HayBeeSee Limited is an agri-tech company, founded in 2016 by Fred Miller, that is developing an autonomous robotics platform for precision agriculture. Based in London, United Kingdom, the company's core product is the 'CropHopper,' a lightweight, 3kg robot that combines a carbon-fibre jumping mechanism with quadcopter propellers to efficiently navigate fields. This design allows the robot to cover large areas, up to 70-100+ hectares per day, while minimizing soil compaction and energy use compared to drones or wheeled vehicles.

The founder and CEO, Fred Miller, has a background in aerospace engineering from Imperial College London and family connections to farming in the USA. This experience led him to identify the limitations of existing solutions like drones, which have restricted flight times and are subject to aviation regulations. In 2017, HayBeeSee began collaborating with Dr. Mirko Kovac's aerial robotics lab at Imperial College London to design the CropHopper from the ground up. The company's CTO is Tomasz Wierzchowski. The platform is designed for frequent, close-proximity crop monitoring throughout the growing season. It captures high-resolution images from just 50cm above the ground, enabling the onboard software and AI to detect and map issues like weeds, pests (such as aphids), and crop nutrient levels with high precision. The data is sent to a web portal, providing farmers and agronomists with actionable maps every two days.

This frequent data collection allows for timely interventions, such as targeted spot-spraying or mechanical weeding, which can reduce chemical usage by up to 60% and potentially increase yields by 10-30%. The business model appears to be service-based, with a projected cost of €15 per hectare. HayBeeSee has received support and funding from entities including Innovate UK, the London Co-Investment Fund, Newable, and the European Space Agency Business Incubation Centre (ESA BIC). The company has completed field trials and is working on making the robot more rugged for commercial deployment.

Keywords: agri-tech, precision agriculture, agricultural robotics, crop monitoring, weed detection, pest detection, jumping robot, farm automation, CropHopper, sustainable farming, targeted spraying, field mapping, soil health, crop diagnostics, autonomous farming, robotics-as-a-service, Fred Miller, Imperial College London, ESA BIC, spot spraying, digital farming