A Robot To Replace The Need For Farmers To Go Inside the Grain Bin

The Grain Weevil powered by JLI Robotics is a mobile robot that scurries across the top of the grain inside of a storage bin performing tasks that no human should ever do. The startup Is led by Ben Johnson and Zane Zents, who are part of the AgLaunch 365 program and recently received the 2021 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize. 

The Grain Weevil is a remote controlled specialized robot designed to engage with the grain directly to aerate, move and manage the grain. 

"It stemmed from an idea from our family friend who is a farmer, who said, ‘hey, look, you guys build robots. Why don't you build me a robot so I and my children never have to go into a grain bin again?’ says Johnson.  

The two entrepreneurs recently joined Chip Flory on AgriTalk, and you can listen to the full interview here: 

“After hearing some farmers talk about how they've lost a loved ones or how they themselves have gotten injured, I got really passionate about the project,” Zents says. 

He describes the robot’s design that includes two augers with an auger drive system. 

“It manipulates the top of the grain–basically shifts it around and levels it like you would with a shovel. It can break up clods, it can gather data and do inspections alongside your sensors you already have in the bin and it can also help you feed the extraction augers so you can have a more efficient extraction process,” Zents says.

For the team, farmer feedback has been essential in designing the robot to be effective and ready for on-farm use. 

“What we've learned from the farmers we can't measure– it’s the most important thing for us in designing this robot,” Johnson says and shares they will be doing on-farm testing in multiple states this year via the AgLaunch network. 

The money from the MIT prize will also be used by the team to further develop and test the Grain Weevil.