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NEW REPORT: Giving potato farmers clearer route to robotics adoption

8 September 2026/in News/by Louise Jack

The National Robotarium creates its first sector-specific horizon scanning report to equip farmers with the knowledge required to ensure future technology investments are informed by evidence, practical need and the realities of Scottish farming.

The National Robotarium has developed a new suite of resources to help potato growers navigate the rapidly evolving world of agricultural automation, providing independent guidance on grading technologies and practical support for future investment decisions.

As labour shortages, rising production costs and increasingly stringent retailer and export requirements continue to place pressure on the potato sector, many growers are exploring how automation could improve efficiency and protect crop value. However, understanding which technologies are suitable for individual farming operations can be challenging.

To bridge this gap, Robotics Engineer Rahul Ramanchandran (pictured) produced an in-depth Horizon Scanning Report examining the current potato grading technology market across the UK and Europe. The study assessed 24 manufacturers and suppliers, ranging from traditional mechanical graders to advanced AI-enabled optical sorting systems, providing an evidence-based overview of the technologies available to farmers today.

Robotics Engineer Rahul created a bespoke robotics horizon scanning report for potato growers in Scotland

Drawing on direct engagement with potato growers, the report explored the operational challenges facing the sector and identified the features farmers consider most important when investing in grading equipment. These included grading accuracy, the ability to handle dirty potatoes, labour reduction, audit-ready data collection, local service support and ease of integration with existing infrastructure.

Alongside the technical research, The National Robotarium developed a practical farmer’s guide that translates complex market analysis into accessible, plain-language advice. The guide explains the different types of grading technologies available, highlights key suppliers, outlines funding and support options, and provides a checklist of questions growers should ask before making a purchasing decision.

Rahul said: “One of the clearest messages we heard from potato growers was that they don’t need more technology options, they need trusted information that helps them make confident decisions.

“By combining detailed market analysis with direct input from farmers, we were able to identify the solutions, capabilities and practical considerations that matter most to growers. The resulting report and farmer guide are designed to help businesses understand what technologies are available, how they compare, and what questions they should ask before investing.”

Co-Director of The National Robotarium Steve Maclaren leading a session on robotics for farming with key stakeholders from the Scottish agriculture sector

Steve Maclaren, Co-Director of The National Robotarium said: “At The National Robotarium, we combine technical expertise, market intelligence and user engagement to help organisations make informed decisions about robotics and automation investment. Our horizon scanning and technology assessment work provides an independent view of the landscape, identifying what solutions exist today, how mature they are, where the risks and opportunities lie, and what is most likely to deliver impact for end users.

“While this project focused on potato grading technologies, the approach can be applied across a wide range of sectors, from agriculture and food production to construction, energy, manufacturing and healthcare. By bringing together industry insight, robotics expertise and evidence-based analysis, we help organisations cut through the hype and make confident decisions about technology adoption.”

Download the reports

A Guide for Potato Farmers (abbrev)

National Robotarium Potato_Grading_Farmers_Guide [full]

OPINION: The problem with Scottish agritech isn’t the technology

13 April 2026/in Blog, News/by Louise Jack

by Naomi Battison, Business Development Manager and agritech specialist at The National Robotarium. Originally published in The Scottish Farmer on 30 March 2026.

Scottish agriculture is under pressure from every direction at once. Labour is harder to find and retain than at any point in living memory. Margins are tighter. Compliance and audit demands keep growing. Sustainability obligations are tightening. If there was ever a moment when the case for automation was urgent, it’s now.

And yet adoption of robotics across the sector remains frustratingly limited. The temptation is to conclude that farmers aren’t ready. But having spent considerable time with crop and arable farmers, livestock farmers, and potato growers across Scotland, I can tell you that conclusion is wrong. The problem isn’t farmer appetite. It’s that the technology conversation being had around Scottish agriculture bears almost no resemblance to the one farmers actually need.

Ask farmers to identify their highest priorities and the answers are both consistent and specific. Labour dependency for repetitive, skilled tasks like roguing, grading, and animal monitoring. Time lost to manual inspection and paperwork. Cleaning and hygiene risks in sheds. In-field crop monitoring that catches problems before they become yield losses. These are the pressure points. They are also, crucially, areas where deployable robotics and automation solutions already exist: vision-based crop monitoring and disease detection, automated soil sampling, robotic shed cleaning, animal health monitoring, vision-based potato sorting and grading.

The technology isn’t the gap. The gap is that these solutions aren’t reaching farms because they’re being pushed at farmers rather than developed with them, and because the support infrastructure around adoption isn’t built around how farming businesses actually make investment decisions.

Naomi Battison, Business Development Manager and agritech specialist at The National Robotarium

Farmers operating on tight margins and often managing businesses built to support future generations cannot afford speculative technology investments. They need clear evidence that a solution works in Scottish conditions and integrates with current infrastructure. Crucially, they need independent, technically informed advice that helps them navigate the robotics landscape and genuinely de-risk decisions – not a sales pitch. When we asked how adoption decisions are made, the answer was pretty telling. Farmers trust proven examples from peers far more than presentations. That isn’t resistance to change. It’s rational caution when capital decisions affect the long-term viability of the farm.

Which is why I think the most important thing the sector can do right now is get serious about separating near-term reality from blue-sky thinking. The industry talks about robotics in ways that can make the whole agenda feel distant and theoretical. Full automation. Autonomous farm systems. The farm of the future. But the applications I’ve described above aren’t theoretical. They’re available. They’re sitting in catalogues, proven in other markets, waiting for a structured pathway to bring them to Scottish farms.

That pathway requires testing environments that reflect real Scottish agricultural conditions, funding that is genuinely accessible to farming businesses, and honest, independent guidance on what’s deployable today versus what’s still five years away.

Another round of innovation enthusiasm won’t close this gap. A system built around how farmers actually work might.

OPINION: The barrier to agritech adoption in Scotland isn’t technology – it’s time

2 April 2026/in Blog, industry, News/by Louise Jack

By Steve Maclaren, Chief Operating Officer at the National Robotarium. Originally published in The Herald Business HQ on 2 April 2026.

Earlier this year , I sat in a room in Inverness with a group of potato farmers. One of them had driven four hours to be there. He wasn’t there because he was curious about robotics in the abstract. He was there because grading, roguing, and soil sampling are grinding his business down, and he wanted to know whether technology could help. What struck me most was not what he said, but what he asked for at the end. Not a robot, not a grant, not a pilot scheme. He asked for someone he could trust to tell him whether any of it would actually work on his farm before he committed a penny.

That conversation – repeated in different forms across three workshops the National Robotarium ran with Highlands and Islands Enterprise last year, covering crop and arable farmers, livestock farmers and potato growers – tells you something important about where Scotland’s agritech adoption challenge actually sits.

It is not a technology problem. The solutions exist. Vision systems for crop monitoring and disease detection. Automated grading tables. Robotic cleaning systems for livestock sheds. None of these are hypothetical. Farmers across the north of Scotland and beyond know this. Many are already adopting automation where they can. Our nation’s farming community isn’t stuck in the past, but it is, in large part, stuck in a risk calculation that no one has yet helped it solve.

Farmers and agricultural stakeholders at a robotics for farming workshop

Investment in unproven technology is a gamble not just with this year’s profit, but with the long-term viability of a family business; land that is meant to pass to the next generation, not to be written down in a bad technology bet. Farmers have told us, consistently, that they will act on word of mouth from someone they trust who has already done the trialling and the verification. What they cannot afford is the time to do that work themselves.

And that is crucial. Time – not money and not scepticism – is the critical blocker. An HIE-funded conference I attended in February, where I shared the workshop findings with a broader group of farmers, validated this directly. Unlike potato growers, who have visible early adopters to learn from, livestock and crop farmers said they could not identify any trailblazers in their sectors to follow. Without a trusted peer who has already taken the risk, most are not willing to go first. That is a rational response to operating on tight margins in a challenging environment. It is not a failure of ambition.

The question, then, is what government and public bodies should do about it. And the answer is not more awareness-raising. It is not another information leaflet or another conference. It is the systematic creation of the capacity that farmers currently lack: the time and access to independent expertise to assess, trial and verify whether a given technology will work in their specific conditions before a single pound is committed.

We know what that looks like in practice, because we have seen it work elsewhere. Denmark’s Odense Robotics cluster – home to more than 160 companies and one of the models the National Robotarium itself drew from – is the product of deliberate, sustained public investment in shared infrastructure and independent expertise. The Basque Country’s Robotekin ecosystem has built a physical testing environment where companies and end users can prototype, validate and demonstrate solutions in realistic conditions before scaling. Both operate on the same principle that you remove the risk from the adoption decision by ensuring that the hard work of verification has already been done.

Scotland has both the need and, increasingly, the assets to build something equivalent for agriculture. The case for a regional robotics assessment and testing facility in the Highlands that can evaluate technologies in conditions that reflect real Scottish farming environments, offer independent expert guidance, and act as the trusted intermediary is not speculative. It is grounded in direct, structured conversation with the sector itself. Farmers with livestock and arable operations travelled long distances tell us they want this. Many followed up after our workshops asking how to take the next step.

The good news is that investment is currently flowing into the Inverness region. HIE has existing funding mechanisms, including a Digital Specialist Advice Grant and a Digital and Technology Adoption Capital Grant, that could support individual adoption decisions. The UK Government’s Robotics Adoption Hubs Network funding creates an opportunity for Scotland to put forward a focused, coordinated bid that establishes Inverness as a node in a national adoption infrastructure while ensuring the facility is designed around the specific conditions of Highland and Island farming.

With a Holyrood election approaching, parties across the chamber have a clear opportunity to commit to an agritech adoption framework that meets that standard. The evidence base is there. The demand is there. The international models exist. What Scotland needs now is the political will to build the infrastructure that turns farmer interest into farmer confidence – and farmer confidence into adoption.

That is what the farmer who drove four hours to Inverness was asking for. It should not be a difficult ask to answer.

A small orange vehicle on 4 wheels moves across a field. It has a light metal glider on top that stretches out on either side.

National Robotarium sponsors farming robot to help care for crop plants and reduce chemical use

22 June 2023/in News, Partnership working, Research, UK Government, Working with Industry/by Louise Jack

A pioneering autonomous robot is set to help farmers better monitor the health status of individual crop plants and reduce herbicide use.

Experts from the National Robotarium, the UK’s world-leading centre for robotics and artificial intelligence, and the James-Hutton Institute will use Small Robot Company’s ‘Tom v4’ agritech robot to remotely scan agricultural fields to identify, locate and log individual weeds and crop plants. This information will then be passed through a complex AI algorithm to create a ‘treatment map’ which tells farmers exactly how much herbicide to use and where to apply it.

Current farming practices often rely on herbicides and nutrients being applied over entire field areas. It is hoped that the research partnership between the National Robotarium and James-Hutton Institute will support farmers to dramatically reduce chemical usage by only applying on field areas where weeds or crop pests are present.

As well as detecting herbicide efficacy, additional outcomes of the research project include collecting and reporting data on individual crop plants – known as per plant precision – to accurately monitor plant numbers and health, including their exact location and survivability, alerting farmers to any areas of immediate need.

“This ingenious robot will reduce herbicide use. It will also encourage the growth of healthy crops which are so vital for food security at a time supplies are threatened by the war in Ukraine and global population growth. – UK Government Minister for Scotland Malcolm Offord

It is estimated around one-third of the world’s agricultural products are pesticide dependent1, with the most common types being herbicides. As the world’s population is expected to reach 9.3 billion by 2050, a 60% increase in the rate of food production will be required, according to a recent UN report2.

The National Robotarium is part of the Data-Driven Innovation initiative, supported by £21 million from the UK Government and £1.4 million from the Scottish Government. The initiative aims to turn Edinburgh into the data capital of Europe and is part of the wider £1.3 billion Edinburgh and South-East Scotland City Region Deal.

Lisa Farrell is Business Development Manager at the National Robotarium. She said:

“With demand on the world’s food resources set to rise significantly, it’s even more important that robotics and AI play an increasing role in assisting modern agricultural practices. Per plant precision agriculture is a fantastic example of how technology can help us to be kinder to the environment whilst supporting Britain’s farming community to be more efficient, precise and productive.

“The National Robotarium continues to be a leading collaborative hub, bringing together academics and global companies. Working with partners like the James-Hutton Institute and forward-leaning start-ups like Small Robot Company, we can drive efficiencies, accelerate growth and deliver economic benefit to the UK’s agriculture sector and beyond.”

Andrew Christie, Agronomist & Agri-Tech Specialist at The James Hutton Institute, said:

“Having the Tom v4 robot on site will expand our capabilities in terms of agricultural research and precision breeding. With possibilities for different cameras and AI models to be applied, the potential for this scientific tool is extensive and expansive. There will be lots of opportunities to explore new uses for the robot in research and it will add value to many of our research proposals going forward.

“Our first task will be to implement Tom in cereal trials to help develop and improve precision of in-field phenotyping as part of our flagship initiative, the International Barley Hub, bringing better understanding of crop characteristics to help us in our aim of producing the resource efficient and climate resilient crops of the future.”

Ben Scott-Robinson, CEO, Small Robot Company said:

“Our Tom v4 robot can see every emerging plant, water droplet, worm midden and early disease outbreak – supporting farmers to know exactly what to treat and when, with minimal chemical use. This is a world-first for scientific research and potentially transformational for plant science. We’ve worked closely with the farming sector to co-design our robot, developing an entirely new model for sustainable, efficient and profitable farming.

“The potential of this technology is phenomenal and the commercial purchase of our Tom robot by the National Robotarium and its subsequent loaning to The James Hutton Institute marks the start of a unique partnership. Together, we can advance research into how robotic technology and automated systems can support Britain’s agriculture and farming sectors to overcome industry challenges, drive sustainable practices and boost productivity.”

UK Government Minister for Scotland Malcolm Offord said:

“This ingenious robot will reduce herbicide use. It will also encourage the growth of healthy crops which are so vital for food security at a time supplies are threatened by the war in Ukraine and global population growth.

“The UK Government has invested £21 million in the National Robotarium supporting high quality jobs, investment and growth while helping to foster their world-leading research, as part of our £2.3 billion pound investment to level up across Scotland.”

Scottish Government Wellbeing Economy Secretary Neil Gray said:

“This innovative research is another example of the valuable work conducted at the National Robotarium, which benefited from Scottish Government support through the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.

“It recognises the requirements of farmers to protect the health of their crops while limiting the use of herbicide. Scotland can be a world leader in the development and use of AI in a way which is trustworthy, ethical and inclusive.”

The National Robotarium will be exhibiting at the 2023 Royal Highland Show from 22 June – 25 June as part of the UK Government Scotland stand (Avenue O, Stand 33P). The Tom robot will also be on display at the James Hutton Institute Stand (Avenue Q, 22-23 June only).

Grain-surfing robot the latest innovation to set up home at the National Robotarium

26 April 2023/in Industry residents, News, Scottish Government, UK Government, University of Edinburgh, Working with Industry/by Louise Jack

A unique burrowing robot which ‘swims’ through grain bulks to ensure crops are stored more efficiently has been launched by agritech developer Crover, a new tenant of the world-leading centre for robotics and artificial intelligence the National Robotarium.

As part of its residency, the Edinburgh-based start-up will benefit from the National Robotarium’s incubation facilities, state-of-the-art labs and engineering expertise housed within its pioneering new £22.4 million research building, opened in September 2022.

Informed by sectoral needs, the facility works collaboratively with partners around the globe to define, develop and resolve industry challenges through the application of robotics and AI.

Crover’s t-shaped robot, which is being funded by Innovate UK, Scottish Enterprise and private funders, has been designed to offer grain aggregators, like farmers, better insight into the environmental conditions of grain crops, such as wheat and barley, when stored in sheds or silos.

The compact device has in-built moisture and temperature sensors and uses two domed-shaped wheels to propel itself through grain or other material in a bulk stack. It then feeds back analysis and data to a dashboard, giving users a more accurate understanding of the grain’s condition.

Temperature and humidity have a profound impact on grain storage and can contribute to the infestation of mould or insects which cause farmers to destroy significant portions of their stored crops. It is estimated that up to 30% of commodity grain is lost from the supply chain globally every year as a result.

Two men stand in hi-vis jackets in front of a grain silo holding a robotic drone with fins

Gianlorenzo Di Santis (left) and Founding Director Lorenzo Conti (right) from Crover

Lorenzo Conti, founder and managing director of Crover, said:

“Working with the National Robotarium has significantly supported Crover’s development by providing us with access to state-of-the-art office and lab facilities and an extensive ecosystem of collaborators, industry experts and academic teams. It’s rare to be surrounded by a team who understand what it means to develop complex robots and we’re excited to continue sharing Crover’s journey with them.

“Traditional methods like spear sampling grain are time-consuming and laborious and quite often impractical and dangerous. In practice, grain storage operators are advised to sample bulk stacks at every 50 cm intervals. The reality is that, if done manually, someone could spend the best part of a week carrying out a single store check depending on the size of their crop load.

“Our device is designed to be controlled from one spot and saves whoever is operating it many hours of work as well as improving accuracy. The robot can ‘swim’ through the grain quickly generating a 3D map of temperature and moisture across the stack. This kind of insight can help people like farmers to better understand the condition of their grain and make informed decisions earlier like increasing ventilation or taking pest control measures.”

A man in a suit stands at the top of stairs in a corporate building

National Robotarium Chief Operating Officer, Steve Maclaren

Steve Maclaren is Chief Operating Officer at the National Robotarium. He said:

“The National Robotarium was launched with a mandate to assist all types of partners to accelerate research from laboratory to market, reduce cost and risk, increase opportunity and, ultimately, pave the way for the UK to take a global leadership role in AI and robotics technology.

“Innovations like Crover’s grain storage device – which could help solve a global problem for the world’s agriculture sector – are a great example of this mandate in action.

“The National Robotarium continues to be a leading collaborative hub, bringing together academics and global companies. Working with tenant companies like Crover, we want to provide a catalyst for entrepreneurship, and deliver sustainable economic benefit to the whole of the UK, its industries and society.”

UK Government Minister for Scotland, Malcolm Offord, said:

“It’s fantastic to see that farming and food and drink-boosting innovations like Crover’s new ‘grain-surfing’ robot will benefit from being part of the National Robotarium.

“Projects like this demonstrate the collaborative benefits the hub is providing, with resulting economic and environmental advances delivered to the UK.

“The UK Government is supporting the National Robotorium facilities at Heriot-Watt University with £21 million as part of more than £2.2 billion investment to level up communities across Scotland.”

Scottish Government Wellbeing Economy Secretary, Neil Gray, said:

“I welcome the development of this technology to help grain storage operators better understand the condition of grain and make informed decisions earlier.

“Technological advances like this show why the Scottish Government has supported the Robotarium through the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.”

LISTEN: Lorenzo Conti and National Robotarium Business Development Manager, Lisa Farrell, discuss how the National Robotarium is supporting Crover on BBC Radio Four’s Farming Today (broadcast 26 April 2023).