FLOX Robotics - a startup that provides artificial intelligence equipped autonomous drones, part of STING's deeptech incubator - announced Friday that it has entered the commercial phase of its young existence, as it delivered and installed its OH-1 solution at FLOX's first customer Nils Lidbaum, a landowner who had been suffering from wildlife damages from wild boar, deer and big bird species - out of which the latest are regularly present in dozens of thousands at his fields.
This marks the kickoff of FLOX's 12-month commercial test phase which will take its solution to over a dozen different customers enabling FLOX to apply and further fine tune its technology across a multitude of different cultivated fields and young forest lands.
"We say what we do, and then we pride ourselves to strive to also do what we say - we are over the moon that we managed to deliver on the earlier commitment we gave to Nils as well as to the public at large and shipped our solution this morning," said FLOX CEO Sara Nozkova. "Nils is customer 1 for FLOX so first of all I want to thank him for believing in us. The commercial test phase enables us to fully test our solution in critical areas such as durability, ruggedness and some of the technical real-world applications, and see how the hardware holds up over extensive periods of usage, and provide our AI systems the ability to gain huge amounts of experience across a wide variety of different lands."
Landowner Nils Lidbaum of Ekolsunds Slott & Wärdshus by Hjälstaviken Nature reserve, just South of Stockholm, Sweden, who welcomed the delivery of OH-1, FLOX's first ever commercial system, commented: "I have been watching FLOX grow since I first contacted them in summer 2021.The founders visited me in autumn that year to learn more about the property and my situation in regards to wildlife damages. Since then we have been in touch on a regular basis and now we are here - deploying their first ever commercial system! I am convinced that FLOX is the future of wildlife inventory and management and I am very happy to be a part of this historical moment."
The FLOX's Mission - Coexistence with Wildlife. Reimagined
FLOX is turning what was previously a human-wildlife conflict to a new way of managing and protecting natural resources in shared landscapes. FLOX developed an autonomous, AI equipped drone solution that helps landowners and farmers to successfully repel wildlife in order to maximize agricultural output and protects young forests, in turn preventing agricultural expansion into natural wildlife habitats. FLOX's technology is currently also being tested in some of the Nordic countries as a possible solution to prevent collisions between trains and wildlife.
FLOX's Call to Action to Farmers & Landowners in Sweden & Northern USA
FLOX plans to deliver its solution to over a dozen different customers in the 12 months following this April month at Lidbaum's estate, bringing OH-1 one month at a time to each customer, enabling FLOX to apply its technology across a wide variety of cultivated fields and young forests, collect and learn from all the gathered data, rapidly iterate both the hardware as well as the software, all the while already delivering value to these early adopters.
There are still some slots open for interested farmers or landowners in Sweden or Northern USA, targeted by wildlife, to become part of FLOX's 12-month commercial test phase - just send us an email if you are a farmer or landowner and interested in applying our solution: [email protected].
"We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been with us since the beginning and contributed along the way. We especially want to call out two special individuals: our coach from KTH Innovation and someone who we truly regard as the godfather of FLOX, Hannes Eder öhrström, who helped us from ideation to the concept stage. And Karin Ruiz, our coach at STING, who supported us to go from concept to first products and customers. We would not have been able to achieve this milestone this quickly without their help! On behalf of the whole FLOX team, thank you Hannes and Karin!"
Source: https://floxrobotics.com/