25 September 2026, Indiana, USA: West Lafayette, Indiana based agricultural technology company Solinftec has scaled its fleet of autonomous, solar powered field robots more than 15 fold over the past three years, with more than 100 of the machines now operating across 13 US states and Puerto Rico as of this summer, the company said in announcements this month. The robots, branded Solix, monitor and treat row crops individually, and the company reports growers using the system have cut chemical inputs by an average of 83 to 89 percent compared with conventional blanket spraying.
Solinftec, which was founded in Brazil before establishing its US headquarters in Indiana, builds the Solix robots around an in house artificial intelligence platform called ALICE, which processes images captured as the robot moves through a field to identify individual plants, weeds, pests and disease symptoms in real time. Rather than spraying an entire field uniformly, the robot applies crop protection products only where its cameras and software detect a target, a technique known as targeted or spot spraying. According to the company, its robots are now monitoring more than 95 million plants individually across roughly 55,427 acres, up sharply from a much smaller base three years ago.
Faster robots and an unmanned refill system
Solinftec has also increased the operating speed of its robots, doubling travel speed from about 1 mile per hour to 2 miles per hour, which allows each unit to cover more ground per day without sacrificing the plant by plant scouting and treatment approach that differentiates it from broadcast spraying. The company’s current robot model is priced at roughly $55,000, and Solinftec estimates growers can recover that cost in about two and a half years through reduced chemical spending alone.
A second piece of infrastructure, the company’s Autonomous Refill Station, completed its first full commercial season this year. The stations let a Solix robot return automatically to refill its tank with water and crop protection product, without a farmer or operator driving out to the field. Solinftec reports more than 1,700 autonomous refills and over 45,000 gallons transferred through the stations so far, with its busiest single station logging more than 120 refills, which the company says eliminated roughly 120 trips a farmer would otherwise have needed to make. Solinftec is building four robot variants for different power needs: a solar electric model called X1, a battery electric XT, a hybrid electric XC, and a gas or diesel powered XR that the company previewed at the Farm Progress Show in August. Capacities across the range span from 50 to 1,200 gallons, letting growers choose a configuration suited to their farm size and crop type.
Alongside the fleet expansion, Solinftec this month opened what it describes as agricultural robotics’ first dedicated storefront on Amazon for ordering replacement parts, aimed at cutting downtime when a robot in the field needs a repair. Chief operating officer Guilherme Guine and chief global strategy officer Leo Carvalho both said the parts store and the broader infrastructure buildout are aimed at making autonomous field robots practical for everyday farm operations rather than a pilot scale technology. The company has set a target of roughly 200 robots and 80 additional refill stations in operation by 2027.
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