Soil Sampling Robot: From Hand Probes to ABB Labs

How the soil sampling robot grew from 1945 hand probes and grid maps to Rogo's SmartCore, why soil tests are in demand, and where ABB lab robots could fit.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/25/20266 min read

Every fertilizer plan starts with a bag of dirt. Someone pushes a probe into the field, mixes the cores and sends them to a lab, and the numbers that come back decide how much nitrogen, phosphorus and potash goes on each acre. A soil sampling robot pulls, bags and labels the cores by itself, and one was already being tested against human samplers in Indiana in 2019. This post runs from the hand probes of 1945 to Rogo's robotic skid steer, this autumn's soil testing news and the labs where ABB robots could fit.

Man in a pink shirt pushing a metal soil probe into the ground between rows of young corn
Man in a pink shirt pushing a metal soil probe into the ground between rows of young corn

A crop consultant pushes a hand probe into an Iowa corn field to sample soil for a late spring nitrogen test. Photo: Tim McCabe, USDA NRCS / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

How soil sampling went from hand probes to grid maps

In 1945 Eugene Walgenbach, a soil science graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, and his professor K. C. Berger wanted reproducible samples of farmland soil for analysis. They asked Jos Steiner, who had a small machine shop in Oakfield, Wisconsin, to make the tools. The first commercial products were probes that remove a core of soil, then an auger for hardpan and pebbly ground, and Oakfield Apparatus still sells hand probes today. The routine stayed simple: take cores at several points, mix them into one composite sample and note where it came from. Labs at Iowa State and Colorado State still recommend 10 to 20 sample points for every 40 acres.

Two men at the edge of a green field looking at a soil probe held between them
Two men at the edge of a green field looking at a soil probe held between them

An NRCS district conservationist and a landowner look at a core from a hand soil probe on a farm near Iowa City, Iowa. Photo: Tim McCabe, USDA NRCS / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Precision agriculture, which emerged in the United States in the early 1980s, turned sampling into a mapping job. In 1985 researchers at the University of Minnesota varied lime rates across fields. Grid sampling appeared, with a fixed grid of one sample per hectare, and by the end of the decade the results fed the first fertilizer recommendation maps. GPS made it work. In the Corn Belt the usual grid became one sample per 2.5 acres, typically from zero to 12 inches deep. Hydraulic probes mounted on trucks joined the hand probes, and so did augers. Rogo, which sells robot sampling instead, argues that a hydraulic probe's frame rises on hard or wet soil, so its depth can change from core to core.

White pickup in a harvested field with a tall green hydraulic probe on the back and a man at the controls
White pickup in a harvested field with a tall green hydraulic probe on the back and a man at the controls

An NRCS soil scientist works a hydraulic soil probe mounted on a pickup in Sarpy County, Nebraska. Photo: Bob Nichols, USDA NRCS / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The robot came out of Purdue University, where Troy Fiechter and Drew Schumacher, researchers in the College of Agriculture, started Rogo Ag and built SmartCore on a Bobcat skid steer chassis. It finds its way with lidar, boundary algorithms and RTK GPS, drills each core with a self-cleaning, high-speed hydraulic auger and heat-seals every sample in its own bag for a third-party lab. A ground sensor holds the depth to within an eighth of an inch. In 2019 it could cover a 500-acre field on a 2.5-acre grid in about five hours, roughly twice as fast as a person. That year the Practical Farm Research group at Beck's Hybrids compared it with three human samplers. The people varied by 15 percent and the robot by 5 percent.

White and orange Bobcat skid steer loader with its bucket lowered on a gravel yard
White and orange Bobcat skid steer loader with its bucket lowered on a gravel yard

A Bobcat S650 skid steer loader. Rogo built its SmartCore sampler on a Bobcat skid steer chassis. Photo: Bob Adams / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Why soil testing needs robots in 2026

Soil testing is in the news because a large federal program now requires it. USDA's Regenerative Pilot Program, announced at the end of 2025, writes soil health testing into its contracts, which run for at least five years. By 16 September the program had put $851.7 million into 5,100 contracts, Civil Eats reported on 21 September. On 2 October Richard Fordyce, USDA's under secretary for farm production and conservation, told Brownfield that $1 billion will be available from 2027. Jesse Womack, a policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, told Civil Eats that soil health testing "is possibly one of the most important emerging management tools we have."

Man in a cap kneeling in grass with a long soil probe beside a red all terrain vehicle
Man in a cap kneeling in grass with a long soil probe beside a red all terrain vehicle

Soil samples being taken on pastureland in Union County, Iowa, to work out fertilizer needs. Photo: Lynn Betts, USDA NRCS / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

More tests mean more cores to pull. Reed Abbott, an agronomist with AgroLiquid, told Ohio's Country Journal on 22 October that most soil tests cost $10 to $30. He warned that a bag marked 0 to 6 inches has to hold exactly that, not 8 inches on one core and 3 on the next, and that a galvanized bucket can throw off the zinc reading. Jorge Heraud, chief executive of the startup TerraBlaster, describes the usual routine as taking several samples, mixing them, bagging them and sending them to a lab, which returns results several days later. At the lab, technicians dry and mill the soil and scoop sub-samples for extraction and chemical analysis.

Lab worker in a white coat at a bench covered with rows of numbered soil sample boxes
Lab worker in a white coat at a bench covered with rows of numbered soil sample boxes

A technician scoops sub-samples of dried, milled soil for extraction and chemical analysis in a soil fertility lab. Photo: Alandmanson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not build a soil sampling robot, and we found no ABB arm named in a soil lab. The nearest real examples come from other kinds of lab. For the SLAS 2025 lab automation show in San Diego, ABB prepared two demos with GoFa 5 kg cobots. One handled pipettes, decanted liquids into titration cups and tended METTLER TOLEDO instruments. The other prepared samples for an Agilent HPLC system and loaded powder dosing heads into a METTLER TOLEDO analytical balance. A soil lab repeats this sort of weighing and instrument tending for every bag that arrives. Our post on seed lab automation covers a similar sample line.

Lab bench with a blue sample carousel, grippers and a white ABB GoFa arm holding a pipette
Lab bench with a blue sample carousel, grippers and a white ABB GoFa arm holding a pipette

The lab cell ABB prepared for SLAS 2025, with a GoFa cobot holding a pipette beside a METTLER TOLEDO sample carousel. Photo: ABB

Where soil sampling robots go next

TerraBlaster wants to skip the bag altogether. The California startup is led by Heraud, who co-founded Blue River Technology before John Deere bought it for $305 million, and it raised a $12.5 million seed round in August. Its sensors use laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, a technique first deployed on a Mars rover, and are dragged through the soil about six inches deep behind a tractor or ATV. The first model measures about 20 times a second and maps pH, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium on 0.15-acre grids. Demos run this autumn, and the first systems are due in spring 2027. In Cornwall, Robotriks is in final testing of sensors carried by robot dogs and tracked vehicles to map soil condition and crop health.

Yellow and black four legged robot walking across a dark stage
Yellow and black four legged robot walking across a dark stage

Spot, the Boston Dynamics robot dog, on stage at Web Summit 2025 in Lisbon. Photo: Lukas Schulze / Web Summit via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

For now the routine still ends with a bag in a lab, and that is where ABB robots could fit. ABB has announced no such project, so treat what follows as a possibility. A GoFa could scoop, weigh and dose dried soil and tend extraction instruments. The IRB 1300 comes in IP67 and Foundry Plus 2 versions that seal all electrical components for places with high levels of liquids and dust, which suits rooms where soil is milled. Flexley Mover P604 mobile robots, which ABB says position themselves to within 10 mm and build their own maps, could carry sample trays between drying, milling and analysis. Cells like these are usually laid out and tested first in RobotStudio.

White ABB robot arm marked Foundry Plus 2 holding a gripper inside a glass walled cell
White ABB robot arm marked Foundry Plus 2 holding a gripper inside a glass walled cell

An ABB IRB 1300 in its Foundry Plus 2 version, with sealed electrical parts, inside a production cell. Photo: ABB

Cost is the first problem. A test that costs $10 to $30 leaves little room for expensive hardware. Rogo sells robot sampling as a service run by its own operators, and TerraBlaster promises its system will not cost more than farmers already pay for sampling. Safety on SmartCore comes down to sensors that steer around obstacles and a machine that shuts down if it touches one. For skills, ABB says GoFa is designed so users need not rely on in-house programming specialists. At home the job stays manual. ISU Extension and Outreach of Kossuth County is running a Garden Soil Sampling 101 workshop in Algona, Iowa, on 10 November, and the local paper's preview calls soil testing "one of the most valuable garden tools."

Close view of a white ABB GoFa arm holding an electronic pipette over small sample tubes
Close view of a white ABB GoFa arm holding an electronic pipette over small sample tubes

A GoFa cobot dispenses into a sample tube with an electronic pipette in ABB's SLAS 2025 lab demo. Photo: ABB

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