AGR | Committed Team

Our Mission

Our mission is to solve the labor problem facing farmers by making robots like Wall-E a reality. To do this, we are starting first with a collaborative robotic platform called Burro, that helps people work more productively and builds a base for the future where farming is fully autonomous.

Our team includes robotic startup veterans with deep experience in computer vision, robotics, and deep learning, as well as entrepreneurs with direct experience selling and marketing ag machinery with some of the worl'ds largest companies. We get up every day excited to build the future, where robots do all tedious tasks outdoors.

Our Team

Charlie Andersen

CEO

Charlie grew up on a 191 acre working fruit, vegetable, and livestock farm. This experience lead him to believe that all tedious farm labor should be automated, and simultaneously to understand the many challenges that robots face in agriculture. He founded Augean Robotics after gaining experience with Case New Holland, John Deere's largest competitor, where he reported to the head of the North American operating unit and worked on special projects across sales, marketing, manufacturing, and distribution. He received a BA from Amherst College, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Deniz Ilhan

Co-Founder & CTO

Deniz has over a decade of experience in Robotics, specialized in embedded sensorimotor system design, power electronics, robotic platform development, system integration, and autonomous behaviors. He received his PhD from University of Pennsylvania's GRASP lab where his research focused on task encoding and behavior development for autonomous robots in outdoor settings. He grew up in a fruit & vegetable farming town in Turkey, and has spent years building commercial robots in several startups including COSY, where he was the lead roboticist.

Terry Scott

Co-Founder & Chief Robotics Officer

Terry leads the development of a unified technical vision, architecture, and autonomy roadmap with Augean Robotics. Prior to Augean, Terry worked as a robotic software developer with COSY, and as a design engineer/project manager with a large manufacturer supplying African railroads. Terry received his PhD from University of Oxford's Robotic Institute where his research focused on computer-vision-based autonomous navigation and mapping, and a BSc in Electro-Mechanical Engineering from University of Capetown. He grew up in South Africa where he gained a love for machinery and robotics.

Vibhor Sood

Co-Founder & Robotic Software Engineer

Vibhor builds Burros and his software controls them. He develops many of the computer-vision approaches to localization and autonomy with Augean Robotics. Prior to Augean, Vibhor worked as a researcher at Lehigh's Vader Labs where he specialized in accurate infrastructure free outdoor localization, and as a software engineer at Samsung. He received a Masters in Electrical/Electronics Engineering from Lehigh University, and a bachelors degree in Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering from Manav Rachna International University in Faridabad, India.

Anthony Markowitz

Mechatronics and Robotics Engineer

Anthony designs and builds the mechanical skeletons of Burro, and also supports the development of computer vision based localization. Prior to working with Augean, Anthony developed firmware and user software for 3D printers at a bioprinting startup. Additionally, Anthony's experience includes researching autonomous unmanned aerial systems (UASs) at NASA Ames Research Center and working on research and development for SpaceX's Starlink satellite project. He received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and is a current Venture for America fellow.

Our Advisers

Kirk Haney

Kirk Haney is the Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Radicle Growth. Under Kirk’s leadership, Radicle Growth has become a market leader in early-stage ag and foodtech investing and company building and has secured top-tier financial and corporate investors. A serial entrepreneur with three exits, Kirk has raised over $200M in venture capital, private equity and corporate capital and has had three successful exits. He’s worked in technology, venture capital and ag & food his entire career and has a clear understanding of what early-stage companies need to be successful. Kirk is a proud father and is passionate about food, health and sustainability.

Adam Plotkin

Adam Plotkin is a Partner at ff Venture Capital. In this capacity he provides targeted strategic counsel to a range of ffVC investments, with a focus on technological innovation in logistics and manufacturing, insurance, e-commerce, financial services and media. Adam has experience serving on the boards of CardFlight, Drop Loyalty, Four Mine and Sure, to name a few. Adam holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Business School. He also holds Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Applied Sciences, and Bachelor of Science in Economics degrees, cum laude with distinction from the College of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Wharton School, at the University of Pennsylvania, as a Benjamin Franklin Scholar and a Joseph Wharton Scholar.

Camillo J. Taylor

CJ is a professor at University of Pennsylvania's GRASP lab, which he joined in 1997. His research interests focus on computer vision and robotics. His current research include work on self-localizing embedded smart camera systems and their applications to problems such as automated surveying systems, ad-hoc surveillance systems, three-dimensional reconstruction and mobile robot localization. He received his A.B. degree in Electrical Computer and Systems Engineering from Harvard College in 1988 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University in 1990 and 1994 respectively.

Simo Kamppari

Simo has a passion for all things technical, and has spent time at McKinsey, and Oracle. He is currently a partner at the Synetro Group where he invests in companies and provides operational support to help them succeed. He received an MBA from Harvard and has two degrees in EE/Computer Science from MIT.

John Spletzer

John is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University where he heads up the VADER Laboratory. His research focus is field and service robotics in unstructured, outdoor environments. John received his PhD from the GRASP Laboratory at UPenn, and has 20 years of experience in the robotics field. He has also been involved in local robotics startups, including serving as CTO of Love Park Robotics which was acquired by industrial sensor company IFM earlier this year.