Vivid Machines
The Toronto startup Vivid Machines has raised $5.8 million to develop a system for remote, virtual monitoring of fruit trees.
Vivid Machines provides monitoring technology for the fruit supply chain. Founded in 2020 by CEO Jenny Lemieux and CTO Jonathan Binas, he company has developed a vision system that uses spectral sensors to help growers, packing facilities, and fruit marketers capture data for permanent crops.
The company says this seed funding round will help Vivid expand its offering to a wider variety of crops.
Crops that tend to grow uniformly like corn can be monitored in bulk using drone or satellite technologies, but permanent crops, such as apples and peaches, are usually trees or shrubs. With the canopy of leaves from the trees covering their fruit, the same overhead monitoring technologies are not ideal for permanent crops. To get around this, Vivid Machines’ technology uses imaging and AI to capture chemical and physical profiles of permanent crops.
According to Vivid Machines, using its platform can help growers manage their crop’s progress and predict yields by providing accurate real-time crop data, down to the individual plant.
In addition to the current funding round, Vivid Machines was awarded more than $800,000 from the federally supported Canadian Food Innovation Network for its project with Ontario-based farms Algoma Orchards and Blue Mountain Fruit Company, which both specialize in apples.
Vivid Machines is creating digital twins, or virtual models, of the orchards to determine ideal harvest timings to meet the demands of grocers and food processors.