
With startup Zordi, founder Gilwoo Lee's enthusiasm for robotics, healthy eating, better produce and sustainable farming has taken root.
Lee hadn't even finished her Ph.D. in AI and robotics at the University of Washington when investors seeded her ambitious plans for autonomous agriculture. Since researcher-turned-entrepreneur Lee founded Zordi in 2020 with Casey Call, formerly head grower at vertical farming startup Plenty, the robotic grower of strawberries has landed its fruits in Wegmans and is now expanding with partner farms in New Jersey and California.
The most rewarding part is that the fruits you get taste amazing, said Lee. You're able to consistently do that throughout the cycle of the plant because you are constantly optimizing.
The company has two types of robots within its hydroponic operations. One is a scouting robot for gathering information on the health of plants using foundational models. The other is a harvesting robot for delicately picking and placing fruits and handling other tasks.
Zordi, whose engineering team is based outside Boston, has farms in southern New Jersey and western New York. The company uses NVIDIA GPUs in the cloud and on desktops for training everything from crop health models to those for fruit picking and assessing fruit quality.
Lee aims to deploy autonomous greenhouse systems globally to support regional markets, cutting down on the carbon footprint for transportation as well as providing fresher, better-tasting fruits grown more sustainably.
Having operated greenhouses in New York and New Jersey for two years, the company recently formed partnerships with greenhouse farms in New Jersey and California to meet growing demand.
Zordi is bringing NVIDIA accelerated AI automation to indoor growing that in many ways is parallel to developments in manufacturing and fulfillment operations.
Adopting Jetson for Sustainable Farming, Energy Efficiency Zordi is building AI models and robots to enable sustainable farming at scale. It uses NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin modules for testing out gathering sensor data and running its models to recognize the health of plants, flowers and fruits, early pest and disease symptoms, and the needs for hydration and nutrition, as well as light and temperature management.
Jetson's energy efficiency and the availability of low-cost, high performance cameras from NVIDIA partners are attractive attributes for Zordi, said Lee. The company runs several cameras on each of its robots to collect data.
Jetson opens up a lot of lower-cost cameras, said Lee. It lets us play with different cameras and gives us better battery management.
With its scouting and harvesting robots, Zordi also aims to address a big issue farms worldwide complain about: a labor shortage that affects operations, leaving fruits and vegetables sometimes unattended and unharvested altogether.
Zordi is planning to scale up its growing operations to meet consumer demand. The company expects that it can do more with AI and robotic automation despite labor challenges.
We want our harvesting robots to do more dexterous tasks, like pruning leaves, with the help of simulation, said Lee.
Omniverse Isaac Sim and Digital Twins to Boost Operations Zordi is looking at how to boost its indoor growing operations with AI much like industrial manufacturers do, using Isaac Sim in Omniverse for simulations and digital twins to optimize operations.
The company's software platform for viewing all the data collected from its robots' sensors provides a live dashboard with a spatial map. It offers a real-time view of every plant in its facilities so that it's easy to monitor the production remotely.
What's more, it analyzes plant health and makes optional crop care recommendations using foundational models so that inexperienced farm operators can manage farms like experts.
We're literally one step away from putting this all into Isaac Sim and Omniverse, said Lee, whose Ph.D. dissertation covered reinforcement learning and sim-to-real.
Zordi is working on gripping simulations for strawberries as well as for cucumbers and tomatoes to expand into other categories.
With strawberries or any other crops, if you can handle them delicately, then it helps with longer shelf life, Lee said.
Lee is optimistic that the simulations in Isaac Sim will not only boost Zordi's performance in harvest, but also let it do other manipulation tasks in other scenarios.
Big picture, Zordi aims to create a fully autonomous farming system that makes farming easy and profitable, with AI recommending sustainable crop-care decisions and robots doing the hard work.
What's really important for us is how do we automate this, and how do we have a thinking AI that is actually making decisions for the farm with a lot of automations, said Lee.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
09/10/2026
September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026
New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
18/09/2026
The inside scoop on attention-grabbing market assets from those in the know 17 September 2026
(L-R): Sophie Green, Todd Brown and Edwina Waddy
Find this episo...
17/09/2026
Lions vs. Bills will also be the first regular-season game at new Highmark Stadi...
17/09/2026
Teradek has announced Bolt 7, a wireless video and data system that adds an integrated 900MHz radio to the Bolt's zero-delay video pipeline. The 900MHz chan...
17/09/2026
DAZN has announced three appointments to its executive leadership team, all reporting to CEO Shay Segev effective immediately.
Patrick Delany has been appointe...
17/09/2026
Monumental Sports and Entertainment (MSE) has announced a leadership restructuring. Zach Leonsis has been named President and Vice Chairman, a newly created pos...
17/09/2026
CP Communications has been named Best of Florida for Audio-Visual Services, and its subsidiary Red House Streaming has been named Best Movie and Recording Studi...
17/09/2026
Scripps Sports and ION have announced a broadcast partnership for the Shriners Children's East-West Bowl, the nation's oldest college all-star football ...
17/09/2026
The 17th annual espnW: Women + Sports Summit, presented by Toyota, will take place October 14-16 at the Ojai Valley Inn in Ojai, California, with virtual attend...
17/09/2026
The Professional Audio Manufacturers Alliance (PAMA) and Shure Incorporated have...
17/09/2026
Lithuanian broadcaster LNK Group has completed a migration of playout and media management for its five national television networks - LNK, BTV, TV1, InfoTV, an...
17/09/2026
Net Insight has announced a pan-Asian live media network created with its regional partners, giving broadcasters, production companies, and media service provid...
17/09/2026
After a high school football injury, the Orlando native found a new path in video production, gaining experience on ESPN college football broadcasts, Tampa Bay ...
17/09/2026
Popular DAW gains free pitch-correction tool
Image-Line have teamed up with Antares to kit their popular DAW software out with a built-in pitch-correction p...
17/09/2026
Promises unprecedented realism, dynamic nuance and clarity
Gibson have teamed up with acoustic pickup experts Baggs, creating a next-generation' pickup...
17/09/2026
Two new libraries join percussion line-up
VSL (Vienna Symphonic Library) have just launched two new libraries that bring some intriguing new instruments int...
17/09/2026
Hardware & plug-in versions gain new features
Arturia have just released a free update that brings some significant new features to their MiniFreak synthesi...
17/09/2026
Respected journalist Catalina Fl rez to succeed Anton Enus as SBS World News pre...
17/09/2026
The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC), in partnership with the Nation...
17/09/2026
Calrec brings leading audio solutions and long-term business value to IBC 2026 We're looking forward to meeting up with you all on 11-14th September in Amst...
17/09/2026
Streaming Content Ratings (SCR) Data Shifts to Daily Delivery Cadence, Mirroring...
17/09/2026
August brought further stabilization in total TV viewing time. Poles spent an average of 3 hours and 31 minutes a day watching video content on TV glass-just 2 ...
17/09/2026
Post-sports seasonal shift redistributes viewership across Poland, while streami...
17/09/2026
Television Content Analytics Pte Ltd (TVC), a Singapore-based deep-tech company specialising in sports technology, artificial intelligence and live broadcast in...
17/09/2026
Rise WIB, the global advocacy group championing gender diversity and career progression across the media technology industry, today announced the shortlist for ...
17/09/2026
RALEIGH, N.C. - Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC) and Hurricanes Holdings annou...
17/09/2026
Lithuanian broadcaster deploys Playout X and Framelight X across five networks, combining on-premises software-defined playout with cloud-based disaster recover...
17/09/2026
Introducing Adobe Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements 2027
Brie Clayton September 17, 2026
0 Comments
New tools make it easier than ever to enhance y...
17/09/2026
LA JOLLA, CA-While the brain orchestrates metabolic processes in the body, it al...
17/09/2026
New series of Aistear an Amhr in shares extraordinary stories behind Ireland'...
17/09/2026
The Late Late Show is back!
Liam Neeson, Siobh n McSweeney, Caitr ona Balfe a...
17/09/2026
The Neighbours Effect: Gen Z Brings Back Big Hair, Double Denim and 80s soap sty...
17/09/2026
The bold, new legal drama starring Dominic West and Sienna Miller launches on Sky and NOW on 2nd OctThursday 17 September 2026
Official trailer released for Sk...
17/09/2026
Every week we read headlines about new threats from AI. From taking over jobs to disrupting critical infrastructure, spreading misinformation or even destroying...
17/09/2026
Arqiva selected by SANZAAR to deliver global distribution of 2026 international ...
17/09/2026
CULVER CITY, CALIFORNIA This evening at the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards, Apple TV...
17/09/2026
A new creature-catching adventure is ready to stream from the cloud this week. Pawprint Studio's Aniimo arrives on GeForce NOW at launch, inviting gamers to...
17/09/2026
RT Statement:
RT is today confirming that its position regarding participation in the Eurovision Song Contest remains unchanged. RT will not participate in...
16/09/2026
Grass Valley has been recognized with a 2026 Technology & Engineering Emmy Award...
16/09/2026
Sports-media leaders explore how cloud, AI, and virtualization are transforming ...
16/09/2026
With a full crew on site in Springfield, deep access to players, and a growing d...
16/09/2026
John Wilson attends The History of Concrete premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Yarrow Theatre on January 22, 2026, in Park City, Utah. (Ph...
16/09/2026
Powerful soft synth receives free update
Wavea have just launched a new and improved version of their feature-packed soft synth, kitting it out with over 20...
16/09/2026
Physical-modelling experts launch pipe-based instrument
Modartt are well known for their impressive Pianoteq and Organteq offerings, and now, they've pu...
16/09/2026
Popular DAW gains free pitch-correction tool
Image-Line have teamed up with Antares to kit their popular DAW software out with a built-in pitch-correction p...
16/09/2026
Microwave Factory and Rohde & Schwarz enable automated SAR measurements with CMX...
16/09/2026
Rohde & Schwarz launches new security scanner for large events at Security Expo ...
16/09/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) invites eligible South African pro...