Tenko Agri-Rover
Smart, affordable precision agriculture for Japan's family farms
Introducing Tenko
Tenko is a compact autonomous rover designed specifically for the needs of small to medium-sized Japanese soybean farms. It combines sensor technology, machine learning, and precision application systems to help aging farmers work more efficiently.
By helping farmers work more efficiently, Tenko improves productivity and supports the future of domestic soybean farming.
Why Soybeans Matter
Soybeans are culturally important and play a vital role in Japanese diets. They form the backbone of Japanese cuisine from miso and soy sauce to tofu and inari zushi, which inspired our team name.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the average Japanese person eats 13.5 pounds of soy a year, or 0.59 ounces a day.
Japan has been relying on heavy imports for decades, not just for soybeans but for many other foods. This puts us at risk of food security problems and makes us vulnerable to supply chain volatility. Increasing domestic production is critical for reducing these risks.
Direct Challenges
Manual Inspection
Farmers spend hours manually inspecting fields for pests, disease, and plant stress—a physically demanding task for aging workers.
Repetitive Monitoring
Older farmers struggle with repetitive tasks like moisture monitoring and growth tracking across multiple hectares.
Low Profitability
Low yields make soybeans unprofitable without efficiency improvements and better crop management.
How Tenko Works
Soil Monitoring
Sensors continuously track soil conditions including moisture, pH, and nutrient levels to optimize crop health and guide precision treatments.
Plant Health Detection
Machine learning algorithms analyze visual data to identify signs of stress, disease, and pest damage before they become critical.
Targeted Treatment
Precision spray system addresses issues like pests immediately, applying treatment only where needed to minimize chemical usage.
Farm-Sized Design
Built specifically for 5-15 hectare farms, unlike oversized commercial drones that are impractical and unaffordable for family operations.
Technology & Design
SLAM Navigation System
Tenko relies on a self-managing system through the use of SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology to learn the field's terrain as it is being used, without external help. The rover is made ready-to-assemble, requiring little technological expertise, making it accessible for an older audience.
SLAM technology works by setting position points as variables and having odometry pods that track xyz movement and xy rotation to calculate the displacement between each set variable. The rover's camera and LiDAR sensors identify key landmarks that can be located from multiple position points, allowing triangulation within just a few calculations and position points, requiring much less processing power than uploading an entire map to the rover's processor.
Machine Learning Disease Detection
Tenko revolves around the substitution of manual management of plant health, which normally requires careful observation of leaves. Our compact rover allows its cameras to get close to crops, giving it an ideal viewing angle. The rover captures footage and runs a machine learning model locally on its central processing unit to detect plant diseases.
The machine learning model is trained on images of soybean plants with a variety of diseases and healthy leaves sourced from a public dataset and further refined through manual labeling, then trained using a cloud GPU on Google Colab. Testing shows over 90% accuracy in identifying plant diseases on images not used during training.
Precision Spraying System
Our agri-rover comes equipped with a 1-liter tank and a pump system capable of moving 7 liters per minute to take fluids from the tank and out of a misting nozzle. The pump operates in short bursts, allowing entire plants to be covered efficiently with each spray cycle.
Our precision spraying system offers two unique benefits: it reduces the amount of pesticide consumed compared to conventional dispersion methods, and it reduces environmental impacts caused by excessive pesticide use. A plant and its adjacent plants are sprayed only after our computer vision model identifies signs of a harmful pest, limiting exposure to non-target areas and reducing harm to beneficial insects—vital due to the effects of biomagnification.
Impact & Benefits
Measurable Environmental and Economic Impact
Reducing Crop Losses
Currently, fungal and microbial diseases cause approximately 16% annual production loss. We aim to reduce this to 15%, which is realistic given Tenko's ability to detect early asymptomatic infections that manual scouting misses approximately 25% of the time due to labor constraints and aging farmers.
Reducing Pesticide Use
Through Tenko's precision spraying system, we target a 40% reduction in pesticide use. Existing precision and real-time spraying systems in field trials have achieved 36-76% reductions while maintaining yields, making our goal both ambitious and achievable.
This is feasible because Tenko deploys variable-rate spraying to apply chemicals only where needed, avoiding uniform broadcast methods that waste pesticides on healthy plants or soil. This approach not only saves costs for farmers but also significantly reduces environmental contamination.
Benefits Across Stakeholders
For Farmers
- • Reduced physical labor and strain
- • Early detection of crop problems
- • Improved yields and profitability
- • More time for strategic farm management
- • Simple interface designed for all ages
For Society
- • Strengthened food security
- • Reduced import dependency
- • Preservation of food culture
- • Environmental protection through precision application
- • Sustainable domestic agriculture
Long-Term Vision
Tenko aims to make agriculture more productive, efficient, and less physically demanding for farmers in Japan. We plan to expand globally to provide an affordable alternative to automation technologies that have traditionally been prohibitively expensive in agriculture.
Tenko will collect user ratings focused on reduced physical burden and ease of operation, ensuring continuous improvement based on farmer feedback.
Learn About Our Business
Discover our market strategy, competitive advantages, and partnership opportunities
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