Bloomfield Robotics
Plant-by-plant AI crop assessment for specialty crops; acquired by Kubota in 2024.
Acquired — still operating
Acquired by Kubota Corporation (via Kubota North America) in September 2024; operates within Kubota's smart-agriculture portfolio.
About
Bloomfield Robotics grew out of Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute with a simple premise: photograph every plant in a specialty crop operation and assess its health individually. Its FLASH stereo camera mounts on any tractor or farm vehicle and captures geo-located images under active lighting; computer vision and deep learning models then grade fruit color, size and maturity plus canopy condition plant by plant, feeding a SaaS dashboard growers use for harvest timing, labor planning and yield estimation.
Kubota acquired Bloomfield in September 2024, folding it into the tractor maker's smart-agriculture strategy; the service covers grape (wine, table, juice) and berry growers across seven countries and three continents. As an acquired company, roadmap and pricing now run through Kubota channels. Caveat: plant-level imaging produces data at a resolution only useful if your operation can staff decisions to match; the value depends on whether harvest and spraying workflows can act on per-plant insight.
What it can do
- FLASH stereo camera with active lighting for any farm vehicle
- Plant-level computer vision: fruit color, size, maturity, canopy health
- Geo-located imaging of every plant across the farm
- SaaS dashboard for harvest timing and labor planning
- Year-round continuous assessment across the season
Setup
Engage via Kubota channels; FLASH camera mounts on existing tractors or farm vehicles.
Prerequisites
Specialty crop operation (grapes, berries); any vehicle that can travel crop rows; internet connection for data sync.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: CMU Robotics Institute origins; acquired by Kubota (Sep 2024); serves growers in 7 countries across 3 continents (provider-claimed). Strengths: unique plant-level resolution, strategic acquirer backing, proven SaaS model. Docked for: (1) roadmap now depends on Kubota integration decisions; (2) value depends on the grower's ability to act on per-plant data. License: Proprietary SaaS; sold through Kubota channels.
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 7.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 3.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 8.0/10
- · Acquired by Kubota Corporation (Sep 2024)
- · CMU Robotics Institute origins; FLASH stereo camera + deep learning stack
- · Serves growers in 7 countries across 3 continents (provider-claimed)
- · manual review: roadmap now depends on Kubota integration; value depends on grower ability to act on per-plant data
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.