Jonathan Medina, a remote monitoring technician at Renu Robotics central command, monitors autonomous mowing units across the U.S.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Inside a dim control room on San Antonio’s north side, operators keep watch over a fleet of blade-wielding robots rolling across fields in four states.
Monitors show the machines’ routes and live camera views as they crisscross sites in Virginia, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. But these Texas-made robots aren’t some kind of new military drone or spy device. They’re autonomous industrial mowers that cut weeds around giant solar farms.
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A RenuBot is seen in 2023 at Renu Robotics in San Antonio. The bot is now in its third generation and about to take on tasks beyond mowing.
Josie Norris/San Antonio Express-News file photo
Autonomous mowers being programmed and analyzed to prepare for deployment to Renu Robotics customers across the U.S.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Autonomous mowing units waiting to be assembled at Renu Robotics. The company is aiming to grow sales and uses for its machines under its new CEO.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Autonomous mowing units waiting to be assembled.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Remote monitoring technicians at Renu Robotics central command use live views and other data to monitor performance of the company’s autonomous mowing units on the job across the United States.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Renu Robotics, which launched in 2018, now has about 100 of the 1,100-pound machines operating at sites in 20 states. Controllers both at headquarters and working remotely keep tabs on them 24 hours a day. They only step in if the robots, which resemble lowrider commercial mowers, have a problem.
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The 55-person company first found its niche mowing the solar fields that cover thousands of acres across the country. It’s been a bright spot in San Antonio’s struggling tech scene and emerging robotics industry, but the late-stage startup has seen little growth since 2023.
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Now, it’s looking to expand its offerings, bring on more investors and grow under a new chief executive with a background in scaling such tech.
Renu Robotics
Renu’s leaders think their machines, which use GPS satellites, Wi-Fi, LIDAR lasers, cameras and other sensors to navigate their routes, are ripe for use in dangerous places like landfills and airports. The Federal Aviation Administration and military are already eyeing robots to mow, blow snow, surveil and check for debris at airfields.
The moves to break into new markets are well timed as the Trump administration continues to attack sources of renewable energy, including utility-scale solar. That industry’s growth is expected to slow through 2030.
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Leading the charge
Iain Cooper, a veteran of SLB, the energy technology firm formerly known as Schlumberger, joined Renu in June. He’d founded the conglomerate’s venture capital division and most recently served as CEO of Austin-based SeekOps, a developer of methane emission sensors for drones.
“Obviously, my background is split between technology development and fundraising,” the new CEO said in a recent interview at Renu’s headquarters. “Admittedly, I was giving money to startup companies and now I’m on the receiving end of that, hopefully.”
Renu Robotics CTO Michael Blanton, left; CEO Iain Cooper, center; and Tim Matus, founder, at the company’s San Antonio headquarters. Renu manufactures autonomous commercial-grade mowers that use a combination of LIDAR sensors, GPS location and AI software that is used to analyze and determine movement.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Tim Matus, Renu’s founder, past CEO and board member, said the time was right for Cooper to come in as the company moves from a late-stage startup to scaling stage.
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“It was really an ideal time to start transitioning because we’ve worked on technology for a long period of time and kind of grew our early base, but now we’re really in that place where we start transitioning to a different type of organization and we needed experience that Iain had,” he said.
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Renu is looking to raise $15 million to grow sales and develop technology, according to Cooper. The company estimates the global market for solar farm autonomous services to be worth $6 billion and that of “niche end markets” such as airports, military sites, landfills and other hazardous areas to be worth another $2 billion.
Matus said the company has nabbed $20 million from investors and another $7 million in federal grants since launching.
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Stairsteps
Cooper said robotics business revenues typically grow in stairsteps rather than the hockey stick growth of other types of tech startups.
“They have to prove up and demonstrate each element of the path to autonomy,” he said. “When you’re talking to investors, you’ve got to talk to investors that understand that it’s not a software company that’s going to do a seven-x return. It’s going to take some time to get there.”
Renu generated $3 million in revenue in 2022 and Matus expected to hit the $10 million mark in 2023 but the company fell a bit short, instead raking in $8.5 million.
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“We reduced revenue expectations in ‘24 & ’25 to address product challenges,” he said on a call from a renewable energy conference in Las Vegas.
Autonomous mowing units waiting to be assembled in the warehouse of Renu Robotics.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
The company held off on sales and spent the past year and a half monitoring and optimizing the units already in the field. According to Matus, the firm intends to scale up manufacturing by the end of next year.
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“We’re moving forward on sales again now,” he said. “We kind of held off a while, that’s why the revenues came down. It’s just kind of understanding what’s happening in field.”
He expects $3 million in revenue this year and $9 million in 2026.
Since 2023, the company has also seen its workforce shrink to 55 from 67. Matus cited “improved efficiencies, streamlining processes and reduced volume output” to the cuts in manufacturing jobs.
The company plans to resume hiring after the fundraising round that’s scheduled to conclude later this year.
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‘Swiss Army knife’
Renubots began as autonomous mowers but the company’s view has evolved into looking at the machines as platforms for various tools.
The techy term for the concept is a “sensor Internet of Things platform,” which Cooper likens to “a really smart Swiss Army Knife that can address a number of different problems for a number of different industries.”
Renu has been testing new attachments on the robots but hasn’t commercialized them yet.
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“You have a machine now that has a huge amount of capability and flexibility,” said Matus. “We could drop tools, put new tools on it … go do snow blowing in the wintertime, mow grass in the summertime, look at the tarmac, pick up (foreign object debris).”
RenuBots with their housing units at Renu Robotics.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
Renu envisions a sort of tool box for the robots, where they would autonomously swap out attachments and continue their work.
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“Ideally, you would have a rack of your different (attachments), like a tool shed,” said Cooper. The robots could “back up into, connect, hook up the power and the telemetry and off you go.”
The Air Force has awarded several small business grants to the firm and Renubots already mow grass on at least four base airfields. The service is also looking at the machines for snow blowing and picking up debris.
The company is also part of a Federal Aviation Administration and DOD study looking at how autonomous systems work together on airfields. That work is ongoing at the National Aerospace Research and Technology Park adjacent to the Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey.
It’s also looking at how the bots could help at remote oil and gas facilities and pulp and paper mills, including a trial currently underway at a Georgia paper plant.
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Central command at Renu Robotics in San Antonio. Technicians monitor the performance of the units at work across the U.S. for the company’s clients. Weather patterns are monitored closely, as rain and snow become a logistical factor.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
The projects show how Renu is looking for more places for its machines to operate, especially in secured areas that are dangerous for people or difficult to access.
“The complexity of the solar (farm) environment, again, meant that we can easily branch out into other industrial control spaces … airports, military bases, large industrial complexes,” said Michael Blanton, Renu’s chief technical officer.
Nuts and bolts
The company holds 14 patents and is on its third generation of robot. They’re 10 feet long, 6 feet wide and barely over 2 feet tall.
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The motor and brains of the device live in a green and black pentagon-shaped body with two large wheels in the front and smaller wheels in the back. The body pushes a large yellow mowing deck that’s also equipped with sensors.
The electric robots move at speeds up to 5 mph and can mow 100 acres on one charge. Technology improvements and better management of routes and power may soon bump that up to 200 acres.
Fully assembled autonomous mowing units seen in the warehouse of Renu Robotics. The company is working to expand sales, services and increasing funding under its new CEO.
Christopher Lee/Staff Photographer
They recharge in about five hours and get automated updates in five-foot tall silver sheds. Fleets can operate 24 hours a day in all sorts of weather.
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According to Blanton, the company looks to artificial intelligence to help analyze and refine the data collected by the robots’ sensors. More data from more robots helps the company improve the machine’s performance over time.
Before Renubots are deployed to a new site, technicians scan the area and create a “route map” for the machines.
“It basically creates a road map for the entire site, and the bot optimizes how it’s going to operate on that,” Blanton said. “It figures out what route it’s going to take but we tell it this is the road system you’re going to use.”
Still, things happen on these road systems that can confuse the bots. Obstacles such as heavy vegetation, deep mud, ruts, washouts, damaged equipment or wildlife can force the robot to ask a human minder for help. That’s where the control room comes in.
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“We have groups of people that are watching groups of bots out there,” Blanton said. “So when a bot has an issue, it’ll say, ‘Hey, I’m having a problem. Can you help me out with this?’ ”
The controller then tells the machine what to do.
“Ultimately, it’s a binary decision,” he said. “Do we want to mow it or not?”
The bots’ cameras have also led to a spinoff service for the company — surveillance.
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“What we do as an add-on service for our customers right now is, if we see something on site that could be an issue for them, we will notify them,” he said.
They’ve already caught wildfires, broken solar panels, trespassers and damaged wires. The controllers often see wildlife like boars, coyotes, snakes and rabbits.
They’ve even seen one of their main competitors in solar farm vegetation management: sheep.
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“At the site I was on, the dogs were there to herd the sheep, but they were fast asleep under the panels,” Cooper said.