Capabilities
Do farmers actually use robots?
Yes, on named farms in named places, and a real share of it is still trials.
The record holds agricultural robots working on specific farms: laser weeders in the Salinas Valley, autonomous tractors in Iowa and Sao Paulo, vineyard robots in Saint-Emilion and Napa, seeding robots in Denmark, and cattle collars across New Zealand. What separates this from a vendor slide is that the registry marks each deployment's own status, so a pilot never reads as a rollout, and it records who published the evidence, so a claim resting only on the maker's own website is visible as one.
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Yes, and the honest version of the answer has three parts.
Where they are working. The record holds agricultural robots on named farms and in named regions: laser weeders across the Salinas Valley and other California growing areas, autonomous tractors in Iowa, Wisconsin and Sao Paulo, weeding and vineyard robots in Bordeaux, Saint-Emilion and Cognac, a seeding robot in Denmark, spot-spraying robots in Slovakia and East Anglia, strawberry-harvesting in Oxnard, and cattle-management collars across New Zealand. This is not one country's story.
How much is still a trial. A meaningful share of the record is pilots rather than rollouts, and the registry holds that distinction in each deployment's own status rather than leaving it to the reader. This page counts them separately and never folds a pilot into the in-use total. A small set of deployments have ended, which is also part of an honest answer: not every agricultural robot programme continued.
Who is saying so. Agricultural robotics is a heavily marketed field, and a good deal of the corpus is sourced to the maker's own website or press room. That is not disqualifying, but it is worth knowing, so each entry is tested against the maker's own name from the record and flagged when every source behind it sits on the manufacturer's own domain. The complement is described as not only the maker's own domain rather than as independent, because the record can prove the first and cannot prove the second.
What the record holds
Counted from the registry rather than asserted. Each entry is one machine in one lifecycle state; a machine deployed at several farms is held together rather than counted as several robots.
- In use
- 48
- In trials
- 10
- Ended
- 2
60 entries, drawn from 120 reviewed deployment records across 49 machines and 43 makers at 94 distinct places. By record rather than by entry, 101 are in use, 15 are pilots and 4 have ended. 24 of the 120 records rest entirely on the maker’s own domain, and 0 carry no start date on the record, so they show as not yet on record rather than being given an invented one.
Three different claims, kept apart
Each column is attributed to what it actually describes. The third is the claim DEPLOY refuses to make.
Named machines on named farms
Every row is a reviewed deployment at a specific place: a growing region, a vineyard, an estate, a research farm. Each carries the registry's own status for that deployment and its own sources, read live at page load.
A pilot is counted as a pilot
The registry marks each deployment operational, scaled, pilot or ended, and this page keeps those totals apart. Folding trials into an in-use figure is the usual way this question gets answered dishonestly, and it is the thing the record makes it possible to avoid.
That the remaining sources are independent
An entry is flagged when every source behind it sits on the maker's own domain, which the record can prove from the company's own name. The rest are described only as not the maker's own domain: a customer's website or a press-release wire is neither the manufacturer nor a disinterested party.
In use on farms
What the registry marks operational or scaled, newest first. Each machine is described in its own model record’s words rather than characterised here.
- AgBot T2 7 Series: Taber, Alberta, Canada, Landgoed de Princepeel, North Brabant, Netherlands, Netherlands
AgXeed is a Dutch company that builds the AgBot T2 7 Series, a fully autonomous diesel-electric field robot for driverless farming on crawler tracks. Maker on the record: AgXeed. 3 deployment records back this entry.
In use on the recordJul 1, 2026 (as reported) - Daedong AI Tractor: Sinan, South Jeolla, South Korea
Korea's first AI tractor featuring on-device vision AI for Level 4 autonomous farming operations. Maker on the record: Daedong. Every source behind this entry is on the maker's own domain.
Still in trials
Deployments the registry marks as pilots. They are counted in no in-use total, because a trial on one estate is a different claim from a machine in service.
Modular autonomy software for agricultural machinery, enabling autonomous operations for organic and regenerative farming. Maker on the record: Nature Robots. 2 deployment records back this entry. Every source behind this entry is on the maker's own domain.
Saga Robotics' Thorvald is a modular, autonomous, electric farm robot for open fields, polytunnels, and vineyards; its best-known application is autonomous UV-C light treatment that disrupts powdery-mildew DNA, and it also performs flowe... Maker on the record: Saga Robotics.
The Ecorobotix ARA is an AI-powered ultra-high-precision plant-by-plant sprayer that targets weeds at roughly 6x6 cm resolution with millisecond timing, cutting herbicide use by up to 95%. Maker on the record: Ecorobotix.
Programmes that ended
Part of an honest answer rather than an omission from one: not every agricultural robot deployment on the record continued.
Small Robot Company (UK) builds Tom, a lightweight autonomous farmbot that surveys arable fields at the per-plant level, generating detailed maps of crop health, weed locations, and soil conditions. Maker on the record: Small Robot Company. 3 deployment records back this entry.
EndedApr 29, 2021 (as reported)- Bear Flag autonomous tractor retrofit: Salinas
Autonomous retrofit kit for existing farm tractors. Maker on the record: Bear Flag Robotics.
How we know this
Every machine on this page is a deployment record on the DEPLOY registry, read live at page load, with its own place, its own dated start where the record holds one, and its own sources. The split between in use, pilot and ended comes from each record's own status rather than from editorial judgement, and each machine is described in its own model record's words. Here are the sources behind them.
Sourcing is tested against each maker's own name from the record, so an entry resting entirely on the manufacturer's own domain is visible as one. DEPLOY reports the farms and regions its record documents; a place absent from this page is one the registry holds no reviewed deployment for, which is not a finding that no robots work there.
Common questions
What jobs do farm robots actually do?
Are farm robots actually in use or just being tested?
Which countries have farming robots?
Is this just marketing from the robot makers?
How many farms use robots?
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