600 kg electric spray robot promises on-farm repairs from 2027

By Priya Raman

Australian start-up FieldSense plans to launch a 600 kg fully electric spraying robot, the FSR500, in early 2027, built from off-the-shelf parts that farmers can repair themselves. The Melbourne company is in the final stages of a funding round that has not yet been signed off, and six units are being built for on-farm deployment in the first quarter of 2027.

The robot carries a 500 kg payload — a 300-litre spray tank, a 6 m boom, batteries and its control system. The name reflects the load. "It'll be able to hold up to 500 kilos," says Co-Founder and CEO Dale Creed. The previous prototype was the FSR150; several iterations later, the go-to-market machine is the FSR500.

Why 600 kg matters

Weight is the design decision, not an accident. "The advantage of a lightweight robot is lessening compaction," Creed explains. "And by lessening the weight, we were able to hold a significant payload, up to 500 kilos." Less mass also helps the machine cross rough ground on family and corporate farms alike.

The trial unit runs up to six hours at 5 km/h on a single 5.5 kWh battery charge. At launch, FieldSense aims to fit two 5.5 kWh batteries, giving roughly six hours at 10 km/h or 4–5 hours at 15 km/h. Recharging takes about four hours per battery; for now, swaps are manual. An autonomous battery-swap station remains at concept stage.

Electricity costs are low at these speeds, Creed says, especially on off-peak or solar rates. FieldSense estimates about 0.6 kWh/ha for broadcast spraying at 10 km/h — 0.5–0.63 kWh/ha across 5–15 km/h — and around 0.4 kWh/ha for spot spraying. Those figures still need field validation.

What does this change for spraying capacity?

Trials have covered about 100 ha, all broadcast spraying at 5 km/h. At the intended 10 km/h standard speed and 100 l/ha, the company estimates roughly 3 ha per hour including refills — about 18 ha over a six-hour job, or six 300-litre tanks. Each tank covers 3 ha in a roughly one-hour cycle, with a third of that time spent refilling. At 15 km/h, capacity rises to about 4 ha/h. Spot spraying should stretch the tank much longer, with manual refills of about 10 minutes expected to suffice.

A planned autonomous refill station — towed to the field edge, no permanent infrastructure — would refill the robot in about 20 minutes per cycle, including travel. A 3,000-litre buffer tank would allow several refills a day and, in Creed's vision, three six-hour shifts around the clock. Neither reliable autonomous refilling nor night-time operation has been proven yet.

Repairability as a selling point

Creed frames the machine against half-million-dollar equipment and high diesel prices. "Farmers are really under strain from all fronts," he says. No price for the FSR500 yet, though Creed promises it "will be competitive with everybody else out there" and public. The robot is 100% Australian-made.

Fixability is the pitch. "We are solely focused on ensuring that the components that we use are easily accessible and easy to repair," Creed emphasises. "That lets farmers fix problems on the spot rather than potentially wait weeks for parts to come in, or be locked into services that stop them servicing the machine themselves."

Navigation uses RTK-fixed positioning, tested, with Starlink on two antennas and a 4G backup. If the signal drops to RTK float, the robot is designed to hold rather than operate outside parameters — though that behaviour hasn't appeared in testing. Users preset paddocks with obstacles, boundaries, gateways and tracks, and can toggle obstacles such as wet zones on and off seasonally.

Tested versus promised

What works so far: electric drive, RTK navigation, broadcast spraying, six hours unattended. What doesn't yet: spot spraying has only seen workshop testing, with field trials in the coming months. Multi-robot teamwork, night operation, AI weed recognition, UV treatment and harvest support are all planned and none demonstrated. "We don't want to be just doing spraying," Creed says. "We want to also be collecting data and analytics so that the farmers can be alerted much sooner than a weekly scout would enable." Longer term, FieldSense wants the robot supporting whole workflows, from seeding to harvest in vegetables or pasture management in dairy.

Every spray job would eventually be logged with volume, chemical type, weather, time and GPS location, giving compliance traceability. "I also manage compliance," Creed notes.

Pilot partners include two south-west Victorian dairies — Radnor Properties near Portland and Doolan Pastoral outside Warrnambool — plus Fresh Select, a Werribee vegetable business supplying major supermarkets along the east coast, and Rainbow Creek Nuts in Gippsland, a family farm battling herbicide overuse that wants automated spot spraying. Two more dairies are in the works.

Australia comes first as a market, then possibly New Zealand, then international. Farmers weighing autonomy should watch two things: validated spot-spraying results from the coming months, and whether the refill station and night operation graduate from concept to demonstration before those six units hit paddocks in Q1 2027.