ARA vs Mini GUSS
Two spraying machines, one verified table. Every figure below is sourced and dated; vendor claims are labelled and kept apart from independent results.
Tractor-drawn smart sprayer that treats each plant individually with centimetre precision.
Best for: Growers cutting herbicide/pesticide spend hard while keeping an existing tractor fleet.California-built (Kingsburg) autonomous orchard/vineyard sprayer — GUSS Automation's smaller sibling to the base Orchard GUSS, built roughly 25% smaller to fit high-density orchard and vineyard rows. Same driverless GPS+LiDAR row navigation and laptop-based fleet supervision as the base machine (one operator can watch up to 8 units), on a 400-gallon tank with interchangeable vineyard and apple/high-density-orchard spray towers rather than the base machine's larger 600-gallon tank. Sold and serviced only through the John Deere/GUSS dealer network in the US and Australia; GUSS Automation is now a John Deere subsidiary following an acquisition confirmed on GUSS's own site.
Best for: Commercial vineyard, high-density-orchard and berry operations in the US or Australia that need a narrower, lower-profile autonomous sprayer than the base Orchard GUSS — its standard height (5 ft 4 in) and 400-gallon tank are sized for tighter row spacing rather than large tree-nut orchards.| ARA Verified 2026-07-16 | Mini GUSS Verified 2026-07-19 | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Task | Spraying | Spraying |
| Autonomy | AI-assisted | Fully autonomous |
| Country of origin | Switzerland | United States |
| Availability | Available now | Available now |
| EU market | CE-marked | Pending |
| Lead time | ~18 wk | Not disclosed |
| Last verified | 2026-07-16 | 2026-07-19 |
| Specifications | ||
| Power source | Tractor PTO + hydraulics; onboard AI compute | Diesel — Cummins F3.8 173 hp Stage V engine; 77-gallon fuel cell gives roughly 12 hours of runtime (agtecher.com; not listed on gussag.com's own Mini GUSS page) |
| Required tractor power | 80 hp minimum | Not applicable — self-propelled 4WD/4-wheel-steer platform, not a tractor implement |
| Dimensions | 6.00 m working width folded to 3.0 m transport | 19 ft long x 6 ft wide x 5 ft 4 in tall (standard/transport configuration); 9 ft 2 in tall with the Apple Tower fitted; 9 ft tall with the Vineyard Tower fitted (gussag.com) |
| Weight | 1,900 kg | Approx. 8,800-8,840 lb (3,990-4,010 kg) empty — two secondary listings give close but non-identical figures (agtecher.com: 8,840 lb / 4,010 kg; agricultural-robotics.com: 8,800 lb / 3,992 kg); not published on gussag.com itself |
| Min farm size | 30 ha | Not disclosed as a number; GUSS markets the Mini GUSS at commercial vineyard/orchard/berry scale, not hobby-farm scale |
| Productivity | Up to 4 ha/hour | 77-gallon fuel cell gives approximately 12-hour runtime (agtecher.com); one operator can monitor/supervise up to 8 GUSS units at once from a laptop (GUSS fleet-supervision model, per agtecher.com and GUSS company materials) |
| Max speed | 7 km/h working | Not disclosed |
| Sensors | High-res cameras · per-plant recognition · section control | GPS, LiDAR and onboard vehicle sensors for autonomous row navigation and obstacle avoidance (agtecher.com; consistent with the GUSS family's published navigation stack) |
| Price & model | ||
| Price (EUR) | €165,000 | ≈€261,000 (converted from the agtecher.com USD listing; not independently confirmed by the manufacturer) |
| Native price | €165,000 | $283,660 USD (agtecher.com equipment-marketplace listing — GUSS Automation does not publish Mini GUSS pricing on its own site, same as the sibling base GUSS profile in this catalog; a separate secondary listing (agricultural-robotics.com) gives a bundled $300K-400K range across the whole GUSS/Mini GUSS/Herbicide GUSS family, not Mini-GUSS-specific, which is a loose but not contradictory cross-check) |
| Business model | Buy · lease · contractor revenue-share options | Buy, sold and serviced through the John Deere/GUSS Automation dealer network in the US and Australia (gussag.com dealer locator); no Mini-GUSS-specific lease or pay-for-service option was found (contrast Herbicide GUSS, which GUSS does offer as a service option per the sibling base-GUSS profile). |
| Ongoing cost | €3,200/yr software + agronomic subscription | Diesel fuel, tires and spray consumables (nozzles, pump wear parts); no published service-cost figures were found. GUSS's own Mini GUSS page notes eligibility for California's CARB FARMER equipment-replacement incentive funding, a US-specific program, not a running cost. |
| Key outcome | ||
| Best verified result | Herbicide applied (dock control, grassland) −90%+ · independent | Chemical and water use with the Smart Apply option up to 50% chemical and water savings on average (vendor figure) · vendor |
| EU context | ||
| CE marking | CE marked (2022) | Not disclosed — no CE-marking evidence found on gussag.com; the manufacturer's own dealer locator lists only US and Australia coverage |
| Machinery Regulation | Compliant — Regulation (EU) 2023/1230 | Not applicable — no evidence Mini GUSS has been placed on the EU market |
| CAP subsidy | Eligible under CAP; SW & FR precision-spraying subsidies | Not applicable — no EU/CAP-linked deployment found; in the US, GUSS's own Mini GUSS page notes eligibility for California's CARB FARMER equipment-replacement incentive program, which is unrelated to EU CAP |
"—" means the manufacturer has not disclosed the figure; we never estimate silently. Model either machine's payback with your own numbers on its ROI calculator page.