Billerica’s Harvest Automation makes farmers’ life less demanding (SLIDESHOW) – Lowell Sun

Harvest Automation is growing and to facilitate that growth, it has moved to a larger facility in Billerica. Above, co-founder and CEO Charles Grinnell displays the HV100, which automates the movement of plants for the nursery and greenhouse industry. SUN/JOHN LOVE

BILLERICA -- Millions of container plants spread out across hundreds of acres.

Moving them and spacing them appropriately is physically demanding labor, to say the least.

Thanks to a company on Rangeway Road, robots can now perform these low-level tasks, helping growers around the country run more efficient operations.

Harvest Automation is growing because of increased demand from these farms, according to company officials. As a result, the business has moved to a larger facility; Harvest now has more space for research and development, manufacturing and staff.

"We've come a long way from the back of my house in Groton," said co-founder and CEO Charlie Grinnell in his 3,200-square-foot facility at 85 Rangeway Road. "It's the classic start-up tale.

"We've been growing and moved over here, across from where we used to be in this campus," he added.

Harvest has been selling its HV-100 robot since 2013; the product lugs around potted plants in commercial nurseries and greenhouses.

About 150 of its robots are spread across 30 growers. Each robot costs about $30,000.

The HV-100 has gone through five iterations, gradually getting refined.

"It's a $15 billion industry with these plants, which relies on workers moving plants and spacing them out," Grinnell said. "It's a gigantic labor task, and relies on a huge amount of manual labor.

"Workers have to rest, but not the robot," he added.

Joe Jones, the inventor of iRobot's Roomba, is credited with inventing Harvest's robot. He was at an agriculture trade show, and heard about the need to move millions of plotted plants. Harvest took off from there.

The robots work safely alongside people and require minimal training to operate, while reducing production costs and improving productivity. It has a quick-swap rechargeable battery, which lasts 4 to 6 hours.

The robots' peak throughput is 240 pots per hour.

Moving forward, Grinnell said the business is working on a new product to help with food crops. He wouldn't reveal the specific food quite yet.

"A different agriculture market," he said.

Follow Rick Sobey on Twitter @rsobeyLSun.

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Billerica's Harvest Automation makes farmers' life less demanding (SLIDESHOW) - Lowell Sun