Carl Palme, CEO of Boundless Robotics, knows all his customers personally. To be fair, the company just has around 50 of them.
They took part in the beta phase of the company's cannabis-growing robot, Annaboto. But Palme told Robotics 24/7 that number will be higher once it’s able to 3D print enough of the product at volume.
Annaboto was designed to help everyday people grow their own marijuana at home. The system features a full-spectrum light, an odor-management system, a vision system, a tripod, an odor-mitigation vortex, and a fully automated hydroponics system. Boundless is offering the product to customers who preorder it for $999.
The Boston-based company in September raised $300,000 in crowdfunding. It serves customers in Massachusetts and Rhode Island but plans to expand to other states.
Boundless guides cannabis growth with AI and vision systems
Palme said the main selling point of the system is that it helps streamline and manage the domestic plant-growing process. With Annaboto’s vision system, Boundless helps consumers monitor their plants.
It uses artificial intelligence to track temperature, humidity, water consumption, and more to help determine the best conditions for growth.
The system can also robotically administer the proper amount of fertilizer each plant needs, an important feature when dealing with a hydroponic system, Palme explained. Hydroponics is a type of horticulture that involves growing plants without soil but only with water and nutrients.
“One thing that is very interesting about hydroponics is that this is the fastest way to grow a plant. It is super-efficient,” he said. “It requires a lot less space, but if you don’t do it correctly, you can kill the plant very quickly, so this is a very good application for robotics and AI.”
Palme applies lessons from Rethink Robotics and other tech firms
Palme has a background in robotics, having worked at AI inspection software company Neurala and collaborative robot pioneer Rethink Robotics.
He said he took some of the lessons he learned at those companies with him when he started Boundless Robotics.
Often, technology companies will create new types of technologies and go in search of a problem to solve. Palme said he decided to take a different approach by first identifying a problem and then figuring out how to solve it.
Palme said he turned to his own life for potential ideas. He quickly realized that while he was able to automate many aspects of his home setup, he couldn’t automate growing his own food.
He initially thought about making a system that helps people automate their gardens but said he realized the market isn’t there yet. In research, Palme found that there was a need for a system that helps people automate growing their own weed.
He did note, however, the end goal is to make a system that helps people grow their own food one day. Somewhere down the line, Boundless hopes to be able to sell the data it's collecting to optimize plant growth to bigger markets, Palme said.
“We’re planning on selling solutions at an industrial-grower level,” he said. “But we started with consumer because this is the fastest and best way for us to collect data.”
Customer, plant data kept in different databases
In collecting that data, Palme said he is also cognizant of making systems that optimize privacy and protect customer data. He explained that Boundless Robotics has two separate databases – one that has customers’ information and another that has data on the plants.
The computer the company uses to collect this information is also encrypted and requires a YubiKey to be accessed, he said.
“This is important because obviously stigma continues to be a problem,” Palme said. “One of the problems that we are trying to solve even though it's legal to consume and grow in Massachusetts, people still don’t want to talk about it. And we want to be very careful with that data.”
A diverse range of customers
Boundless Robotics’ customers range from around 26 to 80 years old, Palme said.
The company is mostly attracting new customers through word of mouth. Marketing the system has been a challenge, given some of the negative connotations around cannabis and the fact that it is still illegal federally, he said.
With Annaboto, Boundless is aiming to entice customers who you wouldn’t typically expect to talk about weed but who use it for therapeutic purposes, explained Palme.
“We’re not going after your typical consumer,” he said. “We’re going after the 80% of people who don’t like to talk about cannabis. Their parents and their family don’t necessarily know that they consume cannabis. I’m talking about executives, athletes – people who you see in your everyday life.”
Eventually, Boundless plans to establish a referral system, but that is still a little ways off, Palme noted.
“We really have to have this grassroots movement, which I think is very interesting,” he said.
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