Nature Robots' EIC Accelerator Farm Robot Learns to Weed by Laser

Vegetable farms spend heavily on manual labour, and Nature Robots wants to cut that cost by up to 60%. The company, founded in Osnabrück in 2022 as a spin-off of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI, builds an autonomous farming system: robots that map the field in 3D, recognise crops and weeds and remove the weeds with a laser, steered by a base station and without relying on satellite positioning or mobile internet.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, A-FORWARD, at its October 2024 cut-off for blended finance, and CORDIS records a grant of €2,474,944.50 from May 2025 to April 2027. After the first year the company has two prototype carrier robots, an integrated laser weeding module and a plan for a first production series. In March 2026 it raised a €4 million seed round. No customer or machinery partner has been named.

From DFKI research to a company

The founding team received EXIST research transfer funding in 2021 and set up the company in 2022, building on more than a decade of DFKI and University of Osnabrück research, according to top agrar and Trending Topics. Osnabrück sits in the Agrotech Valley, home to machinery makers such as Amazone, Claas, Grimme and Krone, which the articles mention as regional context rather than as partners.

At the time of its EIC application the company had about ten staff and €2.1 million in earlier funding, the CORDIS summary says, and planned to ask for €2.5 million in grant and €4 million in equity.

Navigation without GPS, weeding without chemicals

The A-FORWARD system combines AI, modular robots and a base station that coordinates crop and weed monitoring. A 3D mesh navigation system lets the robots work without GNSS or an internet connection, and the project aims to help vegetable farmers adopt regenerative methods while cutting operating costs by up to 80%.

The first periodic report, for May 2025 to April 2026, lists a 3D navigation and perception stack that works without GPS or RTK correction, using multi-layer lidar and depth cameras to map the field in real time and identify plant and weed species; two prototype variants of the carrier robot, tested on different row widths, with stronger drive and steering for compacted soil; a high-power laser module guided by the crop recognition; and a finalised plan for a first production series designed for manufacturing. It cites "hundreds of hours" of field trials on experimental farms and commercial vegetable sites, without hectares or customer names, and sets a target of up to 60% lower manual labour costs.

A sceptical trade press

In August 2025 the company held a demonstration day in Osnabrück. The trade journal Future Farming headlined its report "Nature Robots sounds promising but is still in its infancy" and wrote that the event showed less than had been claimed; COO Gerrit Woeckner described the company as software-oriented rather than a hardware maker.

That shift shows in the 2026 funding announcement. The €4 million seed round of 30 March 2026, led by Climentum Capital with Bayern Kapital and Planetary Impact Ventures, was presented as financing for modular autonomy software that machinery makers can build into their own vehicles, for large fields, vegetables, vineyards, orchards and solar parks on farmland, with laser weeding as one function. The money is for a larger team and a second office in Munich.

1. Navigation without GNSSDevelopedLidar and camera stack described in the periodic report.
2. Carrier robotPrototypesTwo variants tested; a 0-series production plan finalised.
3. AI-guided laser weedingIntegratedModule integrated; no weeding rates published.
4. TRL 8 and market scalingToo earlyNo customer yet; the project runs to April 2027.

Grant and seed money

One report, by iGrow News, says the EIC Fund added a €4 million equity component to the 2025 grant; the company's March 2026 announcement as reported by top agrar and Trending Topics mentions only the €2.5 million EIC Accelerator grant, so whether the EIC equity has been invested is not confirmed. The company's German accounts were not obtained for this article.

Robots for Europe's vegetable growers

Laser weeding removes weeds without herbicides, which fits the regenerative farming the EIC project names as its goal. Nature Robots' plan to sell autonomy to existing machinery makers fits a region dense with agricultural engineering, and the EIC grant pays for the step from research prototype to a first production series. Whether the system works as claimed will show when a machinery maker or grower adopts it.