The University of Lincoln has won £4.8 million to lead HARVEST, a new national hub that will help farms and food businesses move robotics from the lab into everyday use.
The funding comes from Innovate UK’s Robotics Adoption programme. It is part of a £7.1 million investment that includes contributions from industry partners. HARVEST was one of eight hubs chosen from 74 applications, and the only one focused on agriculture and food manufacturing. It will be run by the university’s Lincoln Institute for Agri-food Technology (LIAT) at its Riseholme Park farm campus.
Kanishka Narayan MP, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, visited the campus to launch it.
What the money will pay for
- A £500,000 robot test track at Riseholme, where developers can trial machines in real farm conditions.
- A £1 million Acceleration Fund, open to agri-food robotics businesses across the UK. Firms can apply to HARVEST for help with specific problems that are holding back adoption of their technology.
- Specialist staff and industry-led “Living Labs” for developing, testing and demonstrating robots.
“HARVEST features a state-of-the-art Test Track, hosted at the University’s Riseholme Park farm campus,” said Professor Elizabeth Sklar, Director of LIAT and HARVEST.
Professor Simon Pearson MBE, LIAT’s founding director and Executive Director of HARVEST, said: “This funding takes us to the next level on our journey to advance agri-food through cutting-edge robotic solutions.” He added: “We welcome the opportunity to lead this sector into the exciting future of food.”
A strong horticulture line-up
The partner list includes several names familiar to fruit and vegetable growers:
- Robotics developers: Saga Robotics, Dogtooth Technologies, Dynium and JABAS AI
- Agri-food businesses: British Berry Growers, Cranswick, B-Hive Innovations and Dyson Farming Research
- Commercial, sector and training support: Barclays Eagle Labs, Agri-TechE and Bishop Burton College
Soft fruit is well represented. Saga Robotics makes the Thorvald robot platform, which is used in strawberry production. Dogtooth Technologies develops robots that pick strawberries.
Growers want robots that support people
British Berry Growers chair Nick Marston welcomed the investment. He said it would give growers a chance to shape the technology from the start.
“Working directly with growers is essential to developing technology that can deliver practical benefits on farms,” he said. “This partnership will provide valuable opportunities to test and refine robotics in real growing conditions.”
Marston was also clear about the role of people. “Our people remain essential to British berry production,” he said. “Developing reliable, commercially viable robotics takes time, and this investment is an important step towards technology that can support our workforce and help growers build more productive, resilient businesses over the longer term.”
Why it matters
There’s plenty of promising agri-robotics research. The hard part is getting robots onto farms, because of cost, reliability, regulation and skills. HARVEST is designed to tackle that adoption stage directly. For UK horticulture, it means a single place where growers and robot makers can test machines together before investing.
Image: Dogtooth Technologies.
Related: https://the-fresh-edit.com/2026/10/07/hexafarms-raises-4-8m-crop-monitoring/
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