We commenced as a team of one (Jeff Sterling) and investigated the state of robotics. The question was: could a small team create useful robotic products? What I discovered were a lot of failures, but also a lot of valuable work that had been done that could be built upon.

Our first team member came on board and we bought an excavator to start building our first prototype. We selected and fitted sensors working with Robot Operating System (ROS) and added hydraulic modifications to convert the software control to driving and arm movement.

We videoed an operating robot excavator and began operating and testing the arm movement and driving. We started putting attachments on in mid-2017 to trial mowing and late in the year we ordered the parts to build a prototype picking attachment.

We commenced working with a new 3.5-ton robot to show at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) that was held in Brisbane. We were allocated an open area indoors where we operated the 3.5-ton machine and our avocado picking attachment picking plastic avocadoes. We met our first customers: Newcrest for underground mining and CIMIC for co-development of UFR AutoPile.

We demonstrated our first pile handling solution and partnered with CIMIC to build our autonomous piling application (UFR AutoPile) with CIMIC. UFR Automation was applied to our pile driving machine (UFR PD10) to complete the autonomous solution.

Universal Field Robots proud recipients of a significant accelerating commercialisation grant from the Australian Government Department of Industry, Innovation and Science as part of the Entrepreneurs' Programme.

Co-development of our blast hole logging product (UFR AutoLog) in partnership with IMDEX Limited commenced by building a wireline robot to deploy the IMDEX BLAST DOG™ sensor for mine blast holes.

We completed our first successful field trial of our UFR AutoLog and the IMDEX BLAST DOG™ product at a Queensland mine site.

Scale-up commenced on our UFR AutoLog product by manufacturing 5 blast hole logging robots.

Universal Field Robots announced as winner of the Australian Technologies Competition 2019 – Mining Technologies award category.

Universal Field Robots one of ten forward-thinking Brisbane businesses to be awarded the Lord Mayor's Global Entrepreneur Grant to help take our products global.

We commenced our first international field trial, with our blast hole logging product UFR AutoLog in South America.

Universal Field Robots and IMDEX partnership named winner in the Greyhound Innovation (METS) Award at the Queensland Mining Awards 2020 and finalilst in the METS Ignited Collaboration category.

Universal Field Robots, IMDEX Limited and their mining industry partner were awarded significant funds from METS Ignited to take their automated blasthole sensing product underground.