Saga Robotics: Meet the Robots Making our Strawberries more Sustainable

Imagine you're standing in a farm, surrounded by rows of strawberry plants. It's quiet, except for a gentle hum as a sleek white robot glides between the crops. No tractors, no workers bending over plants with spray tanks. This is the farm of the future, and in parts of the UK and US, that future is already here

Saga Robotics was founded in 2016 by Lars Grimstad and Pål Johan, who met at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. They bonded over robotics and began experimenting with UVC light as a way to control crop diseases. Today, Saga operates globally with services in Norway, R&D and operations in the UK and California. At Saga Robotics, they're attempting to solve two big problems for growers: the use of chemicals on farms and the reliance on labour. Their goal is to make automation and chemical-free treatment the norm in agriculture.

UVC light has an incredibly short wavelength that's almost completely filtered out by the atmosphere. Life on Earth hasn't evolved to be resistant against its harmful effects, which means it can be used to attack the DNA of mildew spores. Saga uses this at night because blue light in the daytime repairs the spores. When UVC bulbs are used at night, they damage the mildew spores, which stay suppressed for longer, making the treatment more effective. Powdery mildew is a particular problem for berries, which are high-value crops grown in tight spaces, often in polytunnels, a perfect environment for mould and disease.

Growers don't like using chemicals. They're expensive, hard to administer, and inaccurate. There's also an immunity problem, so the more you spray, the more you have to spray. UVC is an incredibly safe technology that attacks mildew spores, which are delicate, but leaves the rest of the plant alone. It's a much cleaner and more sustainable alternative to the fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides currently used. Over the last 10 years, Saga has generated extensive knowledge about how to effectively apply UVC. You can't just use a UVC lamp and protect a plant, you need to understand dosage levels and treatment frequency, which varies between plant, crop, variety, and atmospheric conditions.

Thorvald is an autonomous robot with a distinctive horseshoe curve design made by Saga Robotics to administer UVC light to crops. The arch of the horseshoe is covered with UVC bulbs to get as much light into the plant as possible. Saga's technology was used on roughly 20% of the British strawberry harvest this year, and next year they'll treat around 30%, meaning one in three strawberries eaten in the UK will be treated by UVC light. The robot is incredibly manoeuvrable and designed to operate in the compact, challenging environment of polytunnels where most UK strawberries are grown.

Getting Thorvald from lab to field meant tackling big hurdles. First, the technical challenge: farms are incredibly chaotic environments for robots with wind, rain, mud, animals, people, ramblers, unexpected obstacles. There are even mountain lions and rattlesnakes in some locations! Developing a robot that can navigate reliably through all this is challenging. Second, there is a commercial challenge: growers are generally cash-poor. When planning crop protection strategies, they often face a choice between farming sustainably or making money. Saga aims to show growers they can have both without choosing, though they're asking for two big changes: switching from chemicals to UVC and from manual machinery to automation.