Half a million weeds in an hour: this robot will replace hired workers for weeding

The robot has 50 nozzles, which can specifically target

individual weeds and crops at a rate of 20 plants per second before being pulled out by weeding or destroyed by chemicals – the accuracy of which is close to 1 mm. 

“People are increasingly turning to things likecover crops, cover crops, and other regenerative farming practices that allow us to keep soil healthy,” said Gabe Siblev, founder and CEO of Verdant Robotics. — Problem  is that it's hard to do on the same scale that we can grow monocultures, but that's how we feed the world."

Plant identification in the field

When will robots like the SprayBoxidentify a plant, they don't just "shoot" it with a chemical and forget it. They are actively building - centimeter by centimeter - a map of the entire field with geolocation and the identifier of each plant on it. Such massive data collection is believed to be the key to making regenerative agriculture possible on a large scale, where large numbers of workers would otherwise have to be employed.

“Ironically, this is sort of a return tothe way we farmed 100 years ago. Uncovering the knowledge that many older manufacturers have and bringing it back with the help of technology,” Siblev said.

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