WOBURN, MA - PRESS RELEASE - Bloom Automation Inc., an agri-tech company specializing in cannabis trimming equipment, today announced a 90% increase in their trimmer’s processing speed, as enabled by new artificial intelligence algorithms.

The Bloom trimmer—which uses a robotic arm and visual sensors to trim leaves from cannabis flowers—incrementally improves its capabilities using machine learning. The leap in performance is a culmination of a larger dataset of images, thousands of hours of software R&D, and a faster graphic processing unit (GPU).

“Our updated machine processes cannabis at approximately twice the speed of a human trimmer, moving us that much closer to Bloom’s vision of hand-trimmed-quality at an industrial scale,” said Jon Gowa, CEO and founder of Bloom.

Bloom Automation’s system requires little attention from the operator, allowing personnel to perform additional tasks while the machine runs. Gowa estimates that a single technician can operate six Bloom trimmers—effectively performing the work of 12 employees.

“The AI has expedited the analysis of a frame of data from 15 seconds to 1 second, now down to just 0.1 seconds,” said Gowa. “It can distinguish flower from leaf almost instantaneously—hence the advancement in speed.”

Unlike other machine trimmers and standard hand-trimming processes, the Bloom system trims without detaching the flowers from the stem. Each stem is suspended vertically while a robotic arm shears away leaves. Gowa reports that this method prevents damage to the valuable flowers and preserves the plant in a form that is as close to its original state as possible.