Map
Identify invasive vegetation and restoration priorities.
Autonomous ecological restoration
Restoring the Earth, autonomously.
Kineo is building autonomous field robots to help restore damaged ecosystems at a scale traditional methods cannot reach. We're starting in New Mexico, developing technology to identify invasive vegetation, perform targeted restoration work, and document recovery in the field.
Born in New Mexico. Built for the world.
Mission
The restoration problem is bigger than the available workforce.
Across the world, invasive species, wildfire, land degradation, and changing ecosystems are creating restoration needs across enormous areas of land.
Restoration is still largely performed with people, heavy equipment, herbicides, and expensive one-time interventions.
Kineo is exploring a different model: small autonomous machines that can repeatedly map, treat, monitor, and return to landscapes over time.
Treat
Perform precise interventions with small field robots.
Restore
Support native habitat recovery with less disturbance.
Monitor
Document treatments and measure what happens afterward.
Return
Revisit sites to identify regrowth and continue restoration.
This is the platform Kineo is developing, not a claim that every capability is production-ready today.
Proving ground
Our proving ground: New Mexico
New Mexico presents exactly the kind of restoration challenge Kineo was created to address: vast landscapes, invasive vegetation, stressed watersheds, difficult terrain, and limited resources for long-term treatment.
We're starting here because solving restoration problems in demanding environments can produce technology that travels far beyond them.
Start in New Mexico.
Prove it in the American West.
Take it around the world.
Technology
A robotic workforce for restoration.
Kineo's long-term platform combines outdoor autonomous mobility, computer vision, plant and species identification, targeted physical intervention, geospatial treatment records, repeat monitoring, and interchangeable tools for different restoration jobs.
Existing technical work points toward field robots with NVIDIA Jetson Orin edge compute, ArduPilot autonomous navigation, and onboard image models that can help separate salt cedar from native riparian plants, localize stems and crowns, and feed targets back into motion and actuation systems.
First target: invasive vegetation
Salt cedar is the first use case, not the whole company.
Invasive plants are an ideal starting point because they require enormous amounts of repetitive field labor and often require years of follow-up treatment. Kineo is beginning with invasive vegetation in New Mexico while developing a platform intended for many restoration tasks and ecosystems.
Progress
A public field and engineering journal.
Kineo is still early, so these updates are deliberately practical: what we worked on, what we learned, and what has to be proven next.
Q4 2025
Starting in the Rio Grande corridor
Worked on: Conducted a December 2025 site visit with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and documented salt cedar conditions along the Rio Grande.
Learned: Current restoration work combines mechanical removal, targeted herbicide application, and long-term follow-up.
Next: Translate field observations into robot requirements for terrain, plant access, and repeat treatment.
Q1 2026
Building the platform model
Worked on: Explored how multiple robots might route through an acre-scale salt cedar clearing problem with obstacles in the way.
Learned: Mission time depends on routing, parallel work, obstacle avoidance, and how targets are assigned in the field.
Next: Connect mapping outputs to practical treatment plans. Open the pathing demo.
Q2 2026
Teaching robots about the landscape
Worked on: Collected and organized field context around salt cedar, native riparian vegetation, and restoration priorities.
Learned: Useful autonomy has to distinguish restoration targets from native plants and fit real management practices.
Next: Keep improving image-model inputs and field validation before treating robot perception as a finished capability.
Q3 2026
From robot to restoration system
Worked on: Reframed the product around the full restoration loop: map, treat, document, monitor, and return.
Learned: The robot is only valuable if it supports ecological recovery, partner workflows, and repeat site management.
Next: Build with government, conservation, landowner, research, industry, and investor partners who can help test the system responsibly.
Partners
Help us restore more land.
Kineo is looking for partners who want to help prove autonomous restoration in the real world.
Government
Pilot restoration technology on public lands and watersheds.
Conservation
Explore robotic tools for habitat and invasive-species projects.
Landowners
Provide real environments for field trials and restoration pilots.
Research
Collaborate on ecology, robotics, computer vision, and restoration measurement.
Industry
Fund measurable restoration projects and technology development.
Investors
Help build a new category of autonomous environmental infrastructure.
Ecosystem
Working with people who understand land, water, and hard engineering.
Corporate restoration
Environmental footprints can fund real restoration work.
Companies with significant land, water, infrastructure, or environmental footprints can help fund restoration technology and field projects. Data centers are one potential funding partner, not the definition of Kineo.
Example planning model
acres to treat = gallons / 1,230,000
100,000,000 gallons maps to about 81.3 acres of dense salt cedar treatment.
This is a gross evapotranspiration planning estimate, not a guaranteed acre-foot delivery claim. Verified water benefit depends on density, groundwater access, follow-up control, native revegetation, and river reach hydrology.
Global vision
New Mexico is the beginning.
The ecosystems are different, but the underlying challenge exists around the world: there is more land requiring active restoration than people and existing equipment can economically manage.
Our long-term goal is to build adaptable autonomous machines that can work across species, landscapes, and restoration problems. New Mexico is where we're learning how.
Build the robots.
Restore the land.
Scale what works.
Founder
Skip Sorenson
Founder, Kineo Earth
Skip Sorenson is the founder of Kineo, a New Mexico-based robotics company developing technology to restore damaged habitats at scale.
A software engineer and systems architect by background, Skip has spent his career building complex technology for government and industry. He founded Kineo around a simple idea: many of the world's largest restoration challenges, including removing invasive plants, restoring watersheds, and maintaining healthy landscapes, are limited by the cost and availability of human labor.
Kineo is developing field robotics and autonomy to change that equation, beginning in New Mexico's forests, grasslands, and watersheds and ultimately applying the technology to restoration projects around the world.
Skip lives in New Mexico with his wife and four children.
Inquiries
Bring Kineo into a real restoration problem.
Talk with Kineo about field pilots, invasive vegetation, restoration measurement, research collaboration, corporate restoration funding, or investment in autonomous environmental infrastructure.
Follow along
Help prove autonomous restoration in the field.
Join the buildout, introduce a pilot landscape, fund the next stage, or follow the public progress as Kineo develops restoration robotics in New Mexico for wider use.
Source Notes
Water and salt cedar estimates are retained as background for one potential corporate restoration use case. EESI summarized a federal estimate of 211 billion gallons of indirect U.S. data center water consumption in 2023; USGS reported annual salt cedar water use of about 1.15 meters per year in measured lower Colorado River stands; published invasive plant management research has reviewed water loss and salvage in saltcedar stands; NPS describes salt cedar as a high-water-use invasive plant in New Mexico riparian areas.