Do you have issues with sorrel, ragwort or other weeds? Are you interested in a field test?

You can use our contact form and we will get in touch with you as soon as we have capacity.

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Welcome to the new era of agriculture!

In grassland, sorrel, dock and ragwort cause losses of up to 40% and can even lead to the death of cows and horses. Since the EU organic regulation prohibits organic farmers from using herbicides, they have to rely on strenuous and time-consuming manual control with traditional tools.

Paltech is a startup based in the Allgäu region in Germany which goal is to enable herbicide-free agriculture. We offer organic farmers the first automated herbicide-free alternative. Several robots, supported by a drone, are used to detect and mechanically control the weeds.

What is driving us?

Our founders Felix and Florian descend from a family of farmers in the Allgäu region in Germany, which switched to organic farming in 2016. Since then, they have to regularly help with the manual weed control themselves. Since this is very time-consuming and troublesome, they started looking for alternatives. It quickly became clear that there was no satisfactory solution on the market so far. Based on their technological background, the idea to develop a robot to make the work easier for farmers came into existence.

Our Solution

True to our motto “Sustainability Through Automation”, we have a mission to make agriculture more ecologically as well as socially sustainable through the use of technology. A first step in this direction is to reduce dependencies on herbicides.

Step 1: Arrival and preparation of the robots

One or more robots are brought to the field and unloaded. After they have been turned on, they automatically connect to a specially developed app. With this, important information such as the battery level of the robots can be viewed at any time.

Step 2: Capturing plants with a drone

Before actual weed control begins, a drone flies over the field and takes pictures at strategic locations. These photos are used to detect and locate the weeds. Thanks to RTK positioning, this step may also have happened before (e.g. before cutting).


Step 3: Ready to go

This allows optimized routes to be calculated on which the robots travel and remove the weeds. The service employee or farmer can examine settings on a tablet, such as the number of robots or the paths calculated for the robots, and change them if necessary. Once he is satisfied, he can press a button to let the robots start working.

Step 4: Intelligent extraction mechanism

Once a robot has reached the right spot, it positions itself over the plant, readjusts the tool and chops up the plant with root to a depth of 15 cm so that it cannot resprout. It then sows grass seeds to restore the turf and ensure sustainable control.

Proven high effectiveness

In field studies, our control mechanism showed an effectiveness of over 90%!

EU Organic Regulation Compliant

Our mechanical control is herbicide-free and therefore suitable for organic farmers.

Great time saving

Up to 99% of labor time can be saved if our service is requested.

Wide utilization window

Our technology can be used flexibly and thus comes to a usage window of over 100 days a year.

Monitoring

The robots' work can be monitored at any time via an app.

Still not enough?

We develop for and with farmers. Just write to us if you would like to see more applications!

Team

Felix Schiegg

CEO & Software

Felix leads the company and is our expert in image recognition, artificial intelligence and automation. He studied engineering in his bachelor’s degree and then completed his master’s degree in Robotics, Cognition, Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich.

Jorge Decombe

Production & Mechanics

Jorge is our friendly veteran with a good dose of life and start-up experience.

He grew up in agriculture in Chile and graduated as an agricultural engineer in 1988.

 

Florian Schiegg

Corporate Strategy

Florian is our strategist. He holds a Master’s degree in Solid-State Physics and TUM Management as well as a PhD in Electrical and Information Engineering. Florian’s core competencies are in the areas of energy & sensor systems, automation and cooperative positioning.

You want to become part of our team?

We have several vacancies

To the job offers

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