Many states continue to legalize cannabis; the increasing demand will drive the adoption of automation and robotics.

Fremont, CA: With more states legalizing cannabis production and use, the growers strive to keep up with the demand that might give way to investment in robotics and automation technologies to boost productivity and scale their operations.

Slow Adoption

The adoption of robotics might take a while to gain momentum. To boost productivity, the cannabis growers turn to various solutions like few companies who produce robots programmed with machine vision and path-planning algorithms. These robots know about the cannabis crop, distinguish between the plant’s multiple parts, and recognize and isolate the flowers’ cluster for harvest. By far, these technologies seem to be working.

Alleviating manual labor, expediting growth

The cannabis market offers new opportunities for the robotics sector, as it has yet to be completely developed and matured. There are several areas within a cannabis operation where robots can be useful. For instance, they might be used for indoor or outdoor operations to harvest and help in the processing of the cannabis products to market. The various processes that benefit from robotics in industrial or other agricultural operations can be applied in the production of cannabis, hemp, or CBD. Robotic applications can be utilized to cultivate, harvest, and even in laboratory applications for refining operations.

Despite a few indoor cannabis production challenges, robots can bring about the efficiencies to an indoor agricultural operation. Some robots are operating in greenhouses, an environment that is challenging due to the humidity and high temperatures as electronics usually don’t like water and extreme heat.

Other than indoor and outdoor growing, robotics is also considered to play a role in laboratories connected to growth in cannabis demand and production. Many companies might seek to align workflows and enhance efficiencies. One of the keys to securing this would be automation. It will not only be useful in the lab space but also in the processing space as well. 

See also: Top Robotics Companies