Elmar Mair
40
CEO
Neatleaf
Robotics became a passion for Elmar Mair at an early age, and the infatuation became a driving force that took him from his small farming community in the Italian Alps to working for leaders in robotics such as Google’s X, Lucid Motors and Bosch.
“Automating the world, making machines do the work for us humans, feels very rewarding to me,” Mair says. “I also love a good challenge and making robots reliable and useful is not trivial at all, otherwise we would already see way more robots supporting our daily tasks.”
After working with prolific leaders in robotics, Mair set his sights on agriculture, particularly cannabis, and co-founded Neatleaf in 2020.
“What caught my attention about four years ago was the talk about the next agricultural revolution, which will be based on data, AI and automation,” he says. “There is this huge technology gap in agriculture, and I was very intrigued to learn and understand why that’s the case.”
Mair and his team designed the Neatleaf Spyder, an autonomous eye that endlessly patrols a plant canopy measuring, evaluating and transmitting data from millions of self-generated datapoints to the end user. Mair says cannabis cultivators were the ideal candidates for Neatleaf’s tech as they were often openminded about new technologies
“Most of them come from a time where creativity and exploration were key,” he says. “It just makes so much sense to start in this market.”
Q&A
What piqued your interest in robotics?
I got into robotics very early in my studies – automating the world, making machines do the work for us humans, feels very rewarding to me. Furthermore, it is a highly multi-disciplinary field – you don’t develop a robot by yourself, it’s only by bringing together a talented group of people with diverse skills that you will be able to manage the complexities of the task at hand. I also love a good challenge and making robots reliable and useful is not trivial at all, otherwise we would already see way more robots supporting our daily tasks. I guess that’s why I got stuck in robotics and I guess that’s why I’m also very excited about horticulture and plant science which is another highly complex and challenging field.
You’ve already worked with some pretty prolific companies in robotics, why the move to farming, and in particular, cannabis?
I grew up in the countryside and thus, I have some emotional ties to agriculture. However, what caught my attention about four years ago was the talk about the next agricultural revolution which will be based on data, AI, and automation. There is this huge technology gap in agriculture and I was very intrigued to learn and understand why that’s the case. And that’s basically how Neatleaf’s journey started.
As you develop new technologies in an industry, you always want to target the highest margin segments first – similar to Tesla which started with the Roadster, followed by the Model S, finally targeting the broader market with the Model 3. Cannabis is basically the Roadster of horticulture – a highly exciting crop, not just margin-wise, but also due to the fact that it is one of the fastest growing plants and very difficult to cultivate. On top of that, cannabis cultivators are in general very open minded and excited to test out new technologies. Most of them come from a time where creativity and exploration were key. It just makes so much sense to start in this market.
What was the biggest challenge of designing a robot for cannabis cultivation?
The biggest challenge was to minimize the adoption hurdle – basically, making it as easy as possible to install and to try our system: it needs to fit into various cultivation environments, it has to be available at an attractive price point, it is not allowed to interfere with the existing cultivation operation, and it needs to operate fully autonomously and continuously. Developing such a robot which is flexible to install, low-cost, and which can operate 24/7 out of the way of cultivators was not an easy endeavor. It’s exciting to see that the Neatleaf Spyder checks all these boxes.
The Neatleaf Spyder promises a lot, is there a common “ah-ha moment” that sells the cultivator on what the technology can deliver?
I think the two most eye-opening features are the visual canopy overview, the plant health and flower statistics in numbers. The Spyder system offers a Google Earth-style view of their garden which allows them to go back in time and see how the garden evolved and compare different growth cycles visually. It also shows plant stress in numbers, how much more yellowing, necrosis, leaf folding, etc. is present in the garden, and it also measures the flower development, the number of flowers as well as the flower sizes.