[Farm Machinery Spotlighted at KIEMSTA] Metafarmers’ “Omni Farmer”… a multi-tasking robot that harvests cucumbers unmanned for up to 10 hours at night

On the 4th, in one corner of the Future Agriculture Hall at EXCO in Daegu, a robotic arm mounted on a white body slowly reached between cucumber vines. When the gripper at the end of the arm grasped a fruit and cut its stem, the scissor lift below adjusted its height, and the machine moved along the rail to the next crop. This was “Omni Farmer,” a multi-tasking agricultural robot introduced by agricultural robotics startup Metafarmers (CEO Lee Kyu-hwa) at the 2026 Korea International Exhibition of Machinery, Equipment, Science and Technology for Agriculture (KIEMSTA), which opened that day and ran through the 7th. Visitors watched the robot’s movements with their mobile phones raised.

The work the robot aims to take over is harvesting, one of the least mechanized agricultural tasks. According to the Rural Development Administration’s survey on agricultural work mechanization, the mechanization rate for field crops stood at 67.0% as of 2023. Plowing and soil preparation (100.0%) and pest control (96.2%) have been almost fully mechanized, but harvesting remains at only 42.9%. Although these statistics concern open-field crops, the same difficulty applies to greenhouse fruit vegetables, whose fruits differ in size, ripeness and position.

At this exhibition, Metafarmers organized its display under the theme of the “Physical AI Smart Farm.” The idea is to show a farm where robots handle repetitive agricultural work while people focus on decision-making. In a phone interview with this newspaper on the 5th, CEO Lee Kyu-hwa said, “You can think of it as realizing a farm that does not need labor,” adding, “We showcased a futuristic farm where a pest-control robot performs autonomous pest control, while next to it the multi-tasking robot Omni Farmer harvests crops.”
 

Robotic arm, lift, autonomous driving and even a cargo box

The Omni Farmer on display is a prototype, but it is scheduled to be sold to farms in this same form. The machine consists of a harvesting robotic arm, an autonomous driving platform and a lift. It moves between crops along pipe rails on the greenhouse floor, and travels autonomously between aisles. It was designed to operate even in narrow passages.

The cargo box for harvested crops holds four container boxes (Conti boxes). Lee explained, “The crops are placed sequentially into four boxes, and when they are full, the filled boxes are removed at an outside station and empty boxes are loaded again.” The station was not shown at this exhibition.

Recognizing crops is handled by an RGB-D vision sensor that reads both color and distance (depth), together with AI. Using sensor data, it reads fruit size and location as well as pest and disease information, while AI determines ripeness, decides whether to harvest and plans a path to avoid obstacles. At the end of the robotic arm is a “task-specific specialized gripper” that can be swapped according to the crop and task. The company plans to perform harvesting, artificial pollination, sorting and monitoring by changing only the gripper and AI model on the same machine, and also to add functions for flower thinning, fruit thinning and leaf picking. Applicable crops include strawberries, cucumbers, tomatoes and apples, with paprika to be supported later. Among them, cucumbers are the first target for commercialization.

Unmanned harvesting for up to 10 hours even at night

Omni Farmer’s strength is that it can continue working even during hours when people are not working. According to the company, Omni Farmer is designed to harvest unmanned for up to 10 hours even at night and before dawn. This means it can fill labor gaps during times when workers are hard to find, such as when people are resting. Lee said, “It is a machine that can replace people and work even at night.” He estimated its labor replacement effect at about 1.5 workers.

Field demonstrations are continuing in the company’s greenhouse at the Smart Farm Innovation Valley test complex in Sangju, North Gyeongsang Province. Metafarmers is testing the robot while growing cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and strawberries in a greenhouse of 145 pyeong (about 479㎡). Lee said, “It is scheduled to be deployed in actual commercial greenhouses from the end of this year to early next year.” The company has also conducted harvesting, pollination and monitoring demonstrations at a cucumber farm in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province; a strawberry greenhouse in Seosan; an apple farm in Geochang, South Gyeongsang Province; Yangpyeong Agricultural Cooperative in Gyeonggi Province; and a vertical farm in Dongtan, Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.
 

 Started from a Seoul National University lab… CES Innovation Award and Edison Awards Gold

Meanwhile, Metafarmers was founded in September 2022 as a spin-off from the Innovative Design and Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Seoul National University. In July 2025, it secured a pre-Series A investment of 3 billion won, and received the CES 2025 Innovation Award in the Food & AgTech category and the Gold Award in the Smart Agriculture and Sustainability category at the Edison Awards 2025. In April this year, it was selected by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs as an outstanding smart agriculture company. It holds four patents related to mobile robots for crop harvesting and end effectors, and received a technology transfer from the Rural Development Administration for a “fruit growth monitoring device for crop harvesting and its operating method.”

The company presents as its next goal a “Closed Loop” smart farm that uses growth data collected by robots during harvesting for production forecasting and quality control. Whereas existing smart farms have centered on environmental data, the aim is for farms to learn on their own using growth data collected as robots move among crops, and for farm owners to make decisions based on a single report.