The tool, called Zea, has been under development for a year and a half, and like the lettuce robot, uses computer-based vision to scan farm fields and gather data about crops. Blue River Technology is starting out by selling its 3D crop scanning tool as a service to corn plant breeders (with a fee per acre) who are keenly interested in gathering information about crops grown from various seeds in field trials. The breeders want to measure attributes of the crops such as the size of leaves, the effect of drought on plants, and how quickly crops are growing. Evaluating crop breeding field trials is currently a tedious task that is mostly done manually by breeders walking down fields with analog tools, such as rulers. Fields sometimes need to be scanned multiple times to determine how quickly crops are growing. The company's initial corn breeder customers are mostly working in the midwest's corn belt, but Blue River is also working with farms in California to gather data about trials for drought-tolerant crops.