Benji Meltzer

Aerobotics is a South African Ag-Tech startup focused on providing tree crop protection to farmers through early problem detection and alerts. Our Aeroview platform combines weekly satellite data, drone imagery and scout information to track farm performance on a per-tree basis allowing farmers to take a data-driven approach when optimising the health of their farm.

 

Our software uses machine learning to identify early stage problems, automatically detect pests and diseases, and guide farmers to these locations. Farmers validate our algorithms in-field and diagnose the specific problems, ultimately advancing the algorithms’ intelligence and benefiting our grower community.

 

The Cape Town-headquartered start-up processes data from drone and satellite imagery through its proprietary artificial intelligence platform, to discover and analyse problems, pests and diseases affecting trees or vines on farms.

 

 

Benji Meltzer grew up with an enthusiasm for design and entrepreneurship. He obtained a BSc in Mechatronics Engineering at UCT in 2011. He then worked as a software engineer and business analyst at the Cyest Corporation in Johannesburg, Chile and Australia.

 

The work comprised of building software models of businesses and using these to simulate operations and optimise performance in the mining, telecommunications and logistics industries. Next he returned to his passion for engineering and study, and obtained an MSc in Neurotechnology at Imperial College London. His main research areas at Imperial focussed on machine learning and computational neuroscience.

 

Thereafter he joined Uber for a year, where he worked as an Operations and Logistics Manager for Sub Saharan Africa. Benji has developed niche skills in the mentioned areas and aims to incorporate his analytical, computational and biomedical skill-sets in innovating unique and powerful technology.