Burro's CEO on Ag Robot Funding, Farm Labor and Why Using Lidar is Like Drinking Seawater

An Q&A with Charlie Andersen upon his company raising $10.9 million.

Burro CEO Charlie Andersen

Burro made big headlines this week when it announced that it raised a $10.9 million Series A round of funding to scale up its autonomous robotic platform for farms.

Given the big bucks his company just raised, I thought it was an opportune time to re-connect with Burro CEO Charlie Andersen about his company and get his thoughts on the ag tech space overall.

In this Q&A (which has been condensed and edited for clarity), Andersen talks about his robot’s “pop up autonomy” that’s designed to work out of the box, why labor isn’t the only factor driving adoption of farm robots, and how he worked in the field six days a week all last year.

OTTOMATE: Explain to me what Burro’s “pop up autonomy” is.

ANDERSEN: So I think I think when you look at a lot of autonomous systems that people built, they're pre-mapped. So you drive a robot through a field, or you pre-map an area with high precision GPS points, or some crazy SLAM system etc. And in our system, you don't do that.…