TRIC Robotics scales to 1,500 strawberry acres with a 15-robot fleet and a pay-per-treatment model

TRIC Robotics has expanded its autonomous pest-control service to more than 1,500 acres of commercial strawberries in California, running a fleet of 15 robots, according to the company's materials and to AgFunderNews. The company-reported scale is credible; what it does not yet show is whether the treatment outperforms a chemical programme. TRIC runs the service on a Robot-as-a-Service basis, with no upfront investment, no long-term contracts, and payment per treated area rather than per machine. The company was founded by Adam Stager and Vishnu Somasundaram at the University of Delaware.

The robots apply UV-C light to the crop and use a bug vacuum to remove pests, a non-chemical approach the company describes as autonomous UV-C treatments and Bug Vacuum services (TRIC Robotics: what we do). The Luna platform, one of the robots in the fleet, is tractor-sized, and the system targets high-value crops with strawberries as the current commercial focus (AgFunderNews on the TRIC expansion). TRIC owns, operates, maintains and continuously optimises the fleet. The company argues this lowers the capital barrier for growers and reframes the purchase decision from which machine to buy to which outcome to buy; the argument is plausible, but it remains the operator's claim until a grower tests it against a local cost structure.

The growth path is documented unevenly. A Point One Navigation case study describes TRIC scaling from half an acre to hundreds of acres across four large strawberry producers with nine robots (Point One case study on TRIC), and The Robot Report noted the company said its fleet had doubled in a year with nine robots in operation and three more in production (The Robot Report on TRIC). The most recent reporting in the reviewed material puts the fleet at 15 robots and 1,500 acres; the sources do not fully date the step from nine to fifteen robots.

Autonomous non-chemical pest control is now operating at scale in open-field horticulture. That milestone measures the confidence of strawberry growers and investors in the service model, not the performance of the treatment against a chemical programme. TRIC says the technologies have shown measurable improvements in pest control, disease suppression, operating costs and profitability, but those are company claims; the reviewed public record contains no third-party efficacy data. Fleet scale shows a business can sell the service, while the efficacy question still needs independent field data on the target crop and pest complex.

No reviewed material confirms a South African installed base or that the robots are offered to South African growers, so the local question is one of transfer conditions rather than availability. Two peer-reviewed strawberry studies in the reviewed packet define the limitation patterns a local operator should probe before evaluating the Robot-as-a-Service model. Mite egg suppression was substantial in the reported conditions, but direct control of larvae and adults at field doses was minimal, and results varied with canopy and coverage (Koubek and Aghaee 2026, Frontiers in Agronomy). Lygus egg-hatch reduction was not significant in the 2024 field trials, and field doses were far below what is lethal to nymphs (Koubek and Aghaee 2026, Journal of Economic Entomology). Those findings point to the questions a local grower should answer before committing: whether the target local pests sit at the life stages UV-C is documented to affect; whether canopy and coverage conditions on local fields match the trials; and whether the delivered cost per hectare beats the current chemical programme. On the current public record those questions are unanswered, so the California results are a signal to investigate rather than a local recommendation.