Look at This Solar-Powered Robot Weed-Picker
It’s very cute.
Look at This Solar-Powered Robot Weed-Picker
It’s very cute.
There are many high-tech potential solutions, but one of our favorites is the ecoRobotix robot: a solar-powered, automated robotic weeder. EcoRobotix last week secured a new round of funding – nearly $11 million from agriculture investor CapAgro as well as, interestingly, BASF, a German corporation who holds the title of largest chemical company in the world. And we understand why. Just look at this lil’ cutie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKZfjtPquzs
The ecoRobotix looks mostly like an end table on wheels, except the tabletop is a pair of photovoltaic solar panels, about seven feet wide. It’s equipped with a camera and GPS sensors, which allow it to find weeds on the ground, which it then wheels over to do its job.
Underneath the tabletop is a pair of…well, they look like arms. Where the hands would be one each arm is a little cup that covers the weed and delivers a very small dose of pesticide. This is all done completely automatically, with no input needed from the farmer, and the company says this precise delivery system can reduce the amount of pesticide needed by about 20 times. It can cover about 7.5 acres of land per day.
The robot works by detecting the crop it’s trying to protect. At the moment, the robot can only detect two crops – beets and canola – but the company says more options are coming and, just like your smart phone, can be delivered to the robot via software updates.
The ecoRobotix team has done pilot projects in Europe, and has told Reuters that it hopes to bring its product to market sometime in 2019. EcoRobotix will have company; there are several other startups working on this kind of precision scan-and-spray weeding, including American company Blue River.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and are used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at editor@modfarmer.com. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at editor@modfarmer.com
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at editor@modfarmer.com.by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
June 8, 2018
I would like if you contact me around the solar weed picker, please.
Would like more information on this robotic weeder?