Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Launch Pad – FarmDogg”.
I told you there was an interesting mix of products today I was not lying y’all hungry haha, I’m Melissa, so I’m the and founder of ropes, verse, that’s invent. My mic. Working very well may actually want to get up on stage. If you can, it might be a feedback speakers, how we do all right. Well, get your body pickle here, it’ll, probably work out better.
The farm dog, as you can see, is an all-terrain all-electric semi autonomous vehicle. It’S designed for farms specialty farms in premier. Let me work with you here you can use, my microphone might work out better for it. So um farming is the most dangerous occupation in the United States, and it has been for the last 10 years and previously sort of was always off and on the most dangerous.
In fact, fifty percent of all farmers die from tractor fatalities that doesn’t include accidents and in maulings and maimings and so forth. I won’t get into that in addition to that, ATVs also add to that percentage of deaths on farms every year, so the tractor was invented over a hundred years ago and the ATV was invented more than 35 years ago and they haven’t changed since the idea behind The farm dog is to revolutionize the design redesign a vehicle, that’s killing more than fifty percent of the farmers today, so we went to work to start from zero and create a product that could help save lives, and this is what we came up with the farm Dog, so the farm dog is, as I said, an all-terrain all-electric vehicle, because it’s electric, we have a lot more versatility in terms of the packaging. What we did was we moved all of the weight to the bottom of the vehicle, so number one weight distribution is way better. The having the vehicle and distribution at the bottom of the vehicle lowers the center of gravity.
Therefore, reducing the opportunity for vehicles to flip over, we added, then the possibility of getting off and on relatively easily so this step through design which is actually patent pending and then finally, we made it smart so we’re integrating data collecting capabilities on board the vehicle so That we can one of the data capabilities into the cloud and be able to help farmers better, manage their their vehicles, so there’s sort of three key areas: one is the farmer driving the vehicle, the farmer interacting very close at close hand with the vehicle and the Possibility of the farmer being able to use the vehicle remotely. All of these are ways for us to save lives and we’re very much about that. We’Re based in Oregon, so shout out to any oregonians out there.
This product was developed in conjunction with the state of Oregon. We got grant funds to develop it and we’re very early days. We’Ve actually spent a lot of time working with farmers on the design of the vehicle and where we’re currently in actively working with farmers on getting the vehicle into their hands. A lot of very enthusiastic farmers have been working with us on this. The market on small farm vehicles is about 1.5 billion dollars annually in the united states alone.
You know, and we could probably make a very good business out of just selling about one percent of our vehicles into that market today. But another thing to add is the u.s. is way ahead in terms of mechanization to the rest of the world. In fact, forty percent of the world’s population works on farms, so there’s a huge opportunity, not just in the United States but internationally, to help save lives to improve productivity and mechanization of farming. With that, i will close.
Thank you very much. Oh yeah. I got it.
You’Re, my great still on alright imagine we have some questions here from our judges. Ah number one so precision agriculture is, are really interesting space and we’re pretty excited by it. How about sort of sensors or sort of you know things you can put on this platform to allow that farmer to gather data not just about the usage of the ITV, but I know the field is running over the animals he’s tracking, whatever it might be. Yeah. There’S actually two areas that I didn’t touch on too much now, but a data collection is absolutely possible from the very start because we have an on-board computer.
We have the capability of being able to collect sensor data. The one thing that I’ve heard the most frequently is sort of spectral, imagery, photography or video surveillance, or something that sort of enables the the key is that this vehicle would be in and around the orchard or vineyard every single day. So the capability and opportunity to collect data is regular and then the second thing is, it enables us to do the robotics element or smart attachments, so we’re we’re getting into these auxiliary systems.
That platform is what we’re really working on right now and once we have that capability will be able to expand with smart attachments and – and we have a robotics partner that we’ve already established. I just one quick fall question terms: a range and runtime and recharge time like does it fit at farmers working day profile? Absolutely so, there’s two, the two batteries on this vehicle, but one single battery will run between four to six hours. So you know that’s two to three miles per hour or you know it’s really kind of a range depending upon what you’re using the vehicle for and then obviously the batteries themselves are swappable, so you’re not limited in terms of battery or fuel capabilities.
It’S just a matter of how you get recharged – I you talked about this being semi-autonomous. You talk more about that and the acceptance of your customers to have a self-driving farm equipment. That’S a really good question and the reason why we went semi-autonomous is because the reality is the most dif called part of getting a robot into an orchard into this grid where they would operate is getting it there. So we wanted to leave the driver in the process so that they could get the vehicle into the orchard. But what we’re hearing from farmers is that they’re a little bit wary of robotics.
Our idea is to slowly stage into full autonomy, so the initial platform will have follow me capabilities, so you walk along the robot follows along behind. You stops when you stop very safe, very calm and then, as we evolve into more automated tasks, the the vehicle itself can be put into the orchard and do what it needs to do. The other great appeal – and this is why we have the lighting on it – is that it can operate at night and and operating at night, really reduces the likelihood of any issues with obstacles or people or anything like that, and it sort of doubles the labor time. For a farmer so uh, so I used to run around in like a john deere gator back when i was doing work on farms, and you know i was wondering how do you see it comparing because that feels like a similar use profile? I was like why not use their distribution or their vehicle chassis instead of developing a pretty complex.
You know piece of machinery, it actually isn’t very complex and we developed this with an understand with voices from the farmers what what was limited from what they were getting from John Deere or any of the other companies. In fact, the people often ask me about like the square tubing: why are you doing square tubing? The reason is is that farmers want the square tubing, so they can put attachments on it or other things and we’re going to open source the structure of the vehicle. So people can actually make their own one of the farmers was like really pretty, but don’t want any of the bodywork. I just want that rolling thing and, and that’s the kind of versatility that I think they’re not going to get from those big but big boys.
The other thing is that we’re selling direct, so we go directly to the farmer we service and sell direct, because we have the smart system on board to do so. So it’s sort of that constant interaction with the farmer and their and our customer they’re really appeals to people they’re, not from the big guys. When you say service, you have your own service text, or is that open or house? Well, what we would do is the data that’s coming off the vehicle, its cloud-based. You know the controller systems communicate everything so there’s a problem with the battery. If it’s faulting out on the motor, we can know that and we can anticipate maintenance issues. Go out sort of restart everything. What have you well, I’m just one more question: it says the cost on our bout sheets is, the cost of manufacture, is nine thousand dollars and you’re selling it for ten thousand dollars. How do you make that work? Well, that’s our initial manufacturing costs and it’s not great, but we’re selling them for ten thousand dollars and that’s what we’re selling them for that’s the base vehicle.
The money for us is really going to be made on the additional managed services. So once we get into smart attachments in robotics and – and you know, interactivity with the vehicle itself – that’s kind of where the the revenue shown now yeah and it really it’s appealing to them, because the idea of not having a vehicle that goes out into their field And just lives out there for five years sort of aging you know to be able to keep modernizing or keep doing more on. The vehicle is pretty appealing to them. Listen! Thank you.
So much round of applause for rogue Rovers, a farm dog .