Robots in Farming: How Field Automation Looks in Poland

Field automation in Poland is at an earlier stage than warehouse or production-line automation, but 2026 brings a clear turn. The first autonomous robots working without an operator are appearing not just at trade fairs but for real on vegetable and research fields.

FarmDroid: the most widespread field robot in Poland

The Danish FarmDroid is a solar-powered farm robot that performs precision sowing and mechanical weeding for more than 100 row-crop species, including onions, beets, maize and beans. For the latest model, the FD60, the manufacturer has been taking orders since September 1, 2026, with first deliveries announced for January 2027; it is claimed to cover up to 18 hectares per day and up to 60 hectares over a whole season, with a working width of up to 6.75 m and the ability to work up to 20 rows at once (rows from 25 cm) (Farmer.pl). Power comes from eight solar panels with a combined output of 3.7 kW and a 23.5 kWh lithium battery, topped up when needed by a 3 kW range-extender generator with a 12-liter petrol tank. The robot uses RTK positioning and records the location of every sown seed with a claimed accuracy of 8 mm. During later mechanical weeding it therefore hits exactly the gaps between plants rather than the plants themselves.

The smaller, older FD20 model (up to 6 hectares per day) has already been working on Polish farms earlier; according to the distributor its solar power was sufficient in Polish conditions from May to autumn. In 2025 about 10 FarmDroid units were operating in Poland, mainly at vegetable growers, most of them bought without subsidies. Autonomy does not mean no human: the operator is still responsible for preparing the machine, monitoring its work and refilling seed or generator fuel.

A Polish field robot: the Łukasiewicz Network project

An autonomous field robot for maize cultivation, called "Polski Robot" ("Polish Robot"), was created by a consortium of two institutes of the Łukasiewicz Research Network, the Poznań Institute of Technology and the Institute of Aviation, together with the agricultural machinery maker Unia; according to Łukasiewicz it is soon to reach the market (Łukasiewicz; Forum Akademickie). The machine is 4.5 m long, 2.8 m wide and 3 m high, and is built around three working modules: a precision spot seeder, a sprayer, and a mechanical weeding module combined with selective dosing of fertilizer and crop protection products.

The seeder is computer-controlled to the ISOBUS standard, which allows high precision in seed placement. The key element of the weeding module is a camera system that recognizes the position of maize plants and tells them apart from weeds. The robot can therefore apply herbicide or a mechanical tool selectively, only where needed, instead of spraying the whole field. The project was a response to two parallel problems: a shortage of farm labor, and the need to move to more environmentally responsible cultivation methods that reduce the use of agrochemicals.

Autonomous tractors: AgXeed and the cabless approach

Alongside robots specialized in a single crop (like FarmDroid), a category of autonomous tractors is also developing: cabless vehicles designed from the ground up to work without an operator, rather than by automating an existing tractor. The Dutch AgXeed is an example of this approach. Its AgBot field robots come in tracked and wheeled versions, without a cab, for plowing, sowing, soil cultivation or work in orchards and vineyards; the Polish distributor Agrihandler has offered them since the 2026 season (Agrihandler). We do not know the scale of deployments in Poland: we found no public data on the number of machines working.

A separate niche is robots designed specifically for vineyards, such as the French BAKUS from Vitibot (Vitibot); we did not confirm the presence of this model in Poland.

Why deployment in Poland is still small

The key barrier is not technological maturity but the structure of Polish farming. The average agricultural area per farm in Poland was 11.59 ha in 2024 according to ARiMR (FarmPortal). By comparison, a FarmDroid FD60-class robot is designed to handle up to 60 ha per season, which makes economic sense only with a sufficiently large, concentrated area of row crops. For most Polish farms, buying such equipment on their own remains unprofitable.

The solution beginning to appear is service models: renting a robot for the season, sharing equipment among several farms, or gradual digitalization (GPS navigation systems, section control of spraying) as an intermediate step before full robotization. The FarmPortal site notes that in Polish conditions the purchase price and servicing remain the barrier, and that a service model may be more sensible than buying (FarmPortal). ## What next

2026 brings a clear acceleration. The announcement of the FarmDroid FD60, the domestic field robot from the Łukasiewicz Network announced for the market and autonomous tractors on offer in Poland suggest that field automation is ceasing to be merely a topic for agricultural fairs. For now, though, it remains the domain of larger, specialized vegetable farms and research projects. Mass adoption on a typical Polish farm depends on further falls in equipment prices and the development of service models. For more on the classification and uses of mobile robots in other industries, see our article on “Quadruped Robots: Uses in Inspection, Security and Industry”.