The move will integrate Saga’s Thorvald robots with Bitwise Agronomy’s AI crop insights platform at Chambers Farm, a leading UK soft-fruit producer.
It comes as growers face challenges in accessing, interpreting, and acting on intelligence at scale, despite more AI-driven yield prediction platforms and robotic harvesting being available to them.
The new collaboration adds “a powerful new dimension” to Saga’s services by delivering commercial-scale data collection and highly accurate yield forecasting for strawberry growers, it said, by combining real-time fruit and flower counts from Thorvald robots with advanced agronomic models from Bitwise.
How will the partnership work?
Thorvald robots will capture detailed video data on fruit and flower development at Chambers Farm, where it already treats 20% of the UK’s tabletop berries with UV-C crop protection.
The data will be processed using onboard AI (intelligence embedded directly within the machine) to count millions of fruits and flowers per night, assess ripeness, and map findings to specific field locations.
This information will be uploaded to Bitwise Agronomy’s platform, where it is combined with weather and sensor data to generate precise, actionable yield forecasts.
The collaboration aims to give growers reliable, scalable yield predictions and operational insights, streamlining labour and harvest planning.
‘Dependable, automated, and actionable intelligence’
The partnership is a significant step toward providing growers with dependable, automated, and actionable intelligence, said Damian Flynn, CPO of Saga Robotics.
“This is about putting real numbers in the hands of growers,” he said. “Thorvald is already out there, delivering UV-C treatments. Now, it’s doubling its value, capturing detailed fruit data that gives growers clarity, not guesswork. By combining our platform with Bitwise’s agronomy intelligence, we’re delivering what the industry has been asking for: reliable, scalable yield prediction based on automated data collection.”
He told AgTechNavigator: “We are running a commercial project on all of the strawberry fields within 2 of Chambers 3 strawberry operational sites in Kent.
“Our data product will cover 100% of the area covered by the robot doing UV treatment and it will do it multiple times a week which is important for a fast growing crop like strawberry. Cameras in the robot combined with an onboard AI model count berries treated by Thorvald and gives each a ripeness assessment making it easy for growers to understand the status of their crop over large areas.
“The partnership with Bitwise then takes that data, combines it with others including advanced yield prediction algorithms to predict what the crop is likely to be in the future.”
Allows growers to plan months ahead of time
Bitwise Agronomy said the integration with Thorvald is a “natural next step” for the company because it directly addresses the need for more scalable, automated, and real-time data collection for berry and soft-fruit growers.
“Thorvald is uniquely positioned to collect high-quality data, consistently and non-invasively, throughout the growing season,” said Fiona Turner, CEO of Bitwise Agronomy.
“What we’re doing is amplifying that data with proven agronomic models to deliver forecasts growers can use to make informed decisions days, weeks, and months ahead of time.”
Chambers Farm spans around 1,300 acres and produces around 30 varieties of soft fruit, supplying major UK supermarkets.
It described itself as an early adopter of advanced agricultural technologies, including robotics and AI-driven crop insights, and said it would act as the “proving ground” for the new collaboration.
“These are robots that work where it counts: in the field,” said Tim Chambers, managing director of Chambers. “We’ve seen how Thorvald’s nightly data runs help us understand flower density, ripening rates, and where to focus picking resources.
With Bitwise’s forecasting layered in, we’re seeing the potential to take our operational planning to a new level.”
New insights on the horizon
Thorvald robots are widely used in the UK for strawberry production and are expanding into vineyards and other high-value crops internationally.
Saga said it is continuing to expand Thorvald’s data collection and analytics offering, with new crop detections, partnerships and a new digital platform all on the horizon.
“Growers don’t need more complexity,” said Flynn. “They need proven tools that slot into their operations and deliver clear insight. This partnership delivers on that promise, and it’s just the beginning.”
