Antobot robot grant boost for mobile agriculture in East of England

Robotics technology company Antobot has been awarded £40,000 from the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority’s Eastern Agri-Tech Growth Initiative to develop two mobile agriculture robot prototypes.

Antobot designs and develops control hardware and software for intelligent mobile robots, tailored for the application in the agriculture industry.

With the funding, Antobot will develop two mobile agriculture robot prototypes and test, demonstrate and further refine the robot control units.

The company also expects the grant will lead to the creation of two new full-time jobs.

Dr Howard Wu, chief executive officer of Antobot, said: “Receiving this grant really means a lot to us, the team are really excited about what the future holds for the company.

“The agriculture sector is facing an unprecedented labour shortage due to a range of factors including the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit.

“With the grant we will be able to accelerate our product development to bring our products and services into the market quicker.”

It is anticipated that the agricultural technology sector will be worth more than £136bn globally by 2025 and this grant will help the Cambridge-based business to seize exciting opportunities for new product development.

The Eastern Agri-Tech Growth Initiative is designed to support the development of new and innovate ideas within the agri-tech sector, the initiative has two main funds that can help support local businesses.

The Agri-Tech Growth Fund offers grant funding to support product development and improve agricultural productivity, and the Research, Development and Prototyping Fund helps to support the research and development of new products or processes .

James Palmer, mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough said: “By doing this we will able to help the agriculture sector to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 and Brexit, helping the sector to bounce back strongly and sustainably.”

“I am really pleased that we have been able to support Antobot with a grant towards this exciting and innovative project.

“The project represents a great opportunity within an exciting growth sector.”

Antobot is based at The Hauser Forum’s ideaSpace .