Hi-Tech Weed-Killer

Makarand writes "Instead of making improvements to automatic mechanical weeders, Engineers at UC Davis have been busy developing the next generation robotic weeder which will use computerized images of crop rows to identify weeds and zap them. The system can identify weeds from the regular crop by assessing shape, color, size and other variables from the captured images of the crop row. A robotic cultivator will then blast weeds with a weedkiller using syringes mounted on a tractor. A GPS allows the system to calculate weed type densities within the field and the amounts of chemicals dispensed in the area."

Comments

weed zapper

[Anonymous Coward]

If it can recognize the weed, how much harder would it be to design an arm to *pull* it!?! (or roll it and smoke it :)

Example that most of /. won't get

[gmhowell]

Until this device can tell the difference between morning glory at 2 inches tall and okra at 2 inches tall, there's still a job for human beings. Those were some long summer days. On the upside, people paid well for okra.

I question the demographics...

[djh101010]

Around here (midwestern USA), the farmers are reluctant to try even the most basic of new things (no-till farming, organics, etc). I'm having a hard time imagining any of the farmers that I know shelling out a couple of grand on a robot with a camera, to run up & down the fields.

Then again, if they can show how the cost is offset by gains in yields, then it just might get some use. Another concern is battery life - just how far is this thing going to go on a charge? 1 mile? That'll cover 4 rows...then what?

Re:I question the demographics...

[Osty]

Around here (midwestern USA), the farmers are reluctant to try even the most basic of new things (no-till farming, organics, etc). I'm having a hard time imagining any of the farmers that I know shelling out a couple of grand on a robot with a camera, to run up & down the fields.

You must not be very in touch with your local farming community. Most farmers are quite willing to try new things. For example, my own father (independent Midwest family farmer, works some 2000 acres with my older brother) has been doing no-till for over a decade. He's also invested heavily in equipment and software for mapping out yields for each field, and more. However, you have to realize that farming is a business. Everything is about the bottom-line. As such, there's no more money to be made in organic farming (less money, actually), so it's not something he does. Leave that to the hippies and the yuppies that don't mind paying $5.00 for a pint of milk.

Then again, if they can show how the cost is offset by gains in yields, then it just might get some use.

This sounds more like a labor-saving device than a yield-increasing device. As such, I doubt you'll be able to show an increase in yield, and certainly not one significant enough to justify this technology. Instead, you should be looking at savings in wages. If the cost (purchase cost plus any ongoing maintenance costs times the expected number of units needed) is less than what it would take to pay minimum wage to some amount of local kids for a few weeks of summer work over the expected lifespan of the robot, then maybe it would be worth doing. On the other hand, it's probably a better idea to just continue hiring kids to walk the fields. Everybody wins -- the kids get money, excercise, and a nice tan, while the farmer gets cheap labor and clear fields, and the community gets something for teenagers to do during the lazy summer days rather than get in trouble. And if you do it right (ie, use hooks to cut out the weeds, rather than herbicide sprays), you won't even damage the environment by introducing herbicides to the food or the ground water. (can you tell I spent most of my summers from around age 8 to age 15 walking fields for my dad?)

Another concern is battery life - just how far is this thing going to go on a charge? 1 mile? That'll cover 4 rows...then what?

If they're serious about this technology, it won't be battery driven. It'll be driven by diesel, and probably will be expanded to cover multiple rows at a time. Also, you can't really convert miles into rows. Depending on the geometry of the field, one mile could be two rows, or it could be twenty.

I do see one potential problem with the technology, though. Since it uses video recognition to determine what's bad and what's not, what happens when a plant is only bad in a certain scenario? For example, corn in a soybean field is considered a weed. This robot should kill it, or the robot will be worthless. However, corn in a corn field is not a weed. If the robot somehow determines that the cornfield is actually a bean field, there goes your entire yield.

Excellent idea but...

[West Palm Beach]

The weed-killing machine still has a few bugs. For example, overlapping weeds and crops can confound the computerized instructions that run the squirt guns.

Nothing still beats the human eye and mind for such tasks, since there are so many variables involved in the location of weeds versus crops.

If such equipment can be further refined, perhaps with a robotic arm to look behind and possibly separate weeds from crops, sometthing close to human accuracy can be obtained.

At least now, the danger to humans with working with pesticides can be reduced.

chemical weed killer?

[jpnews]

Seems to me that a technology like this should be designed to be attractive to organic growers, since they're far more likely to be interested in a robotic weed killer. But it better have a fuel cell or enviromentally friendly battery, too.

And why kill weeds in place when you can just yank 'em and dump the whole thing in the compost pile? I was expecting a big bot with a couple of graspers on either end and a huge solar energy collecting mast on top.

But really, I just disagree with the premise that agriculture needs to be fully mechanized and automated to help the economy, or whatever tbe argument supporting things like this might actually be.

Re:Good.

[rgmoore]

Note that the post said that they used weed killer chemicals. That's a slap in the face of people wanting to use healthier and more organically grown food.

Read it again yourself. One of the points specifically made in the article is that the basic technology is adaptable to either conventional or organic methods. Note the following quotes from the article:

"The real winner from this project is the environment," said Giles, a fluids expert. "We'll be able to reduce chemical use and perhaps even eliminate weed problems for organic growers."

...

One of the major challenges has been engineering fluids to hit the weeds and spread over them without bouncing onto the crop. The tiny squirt guns might be filled with herbicides or with alternatives, such as cinnamon oil or superheated oil for organic growers.

It sounds very much to me as though they are at least thinking of possible uses in organic growing.

And even if they do use pesticides, consider the likely alternatives. Big agribusiness is currently suggesting that the solution to weeds is to create gentically engineered crops that are resistant to herbicides and then blasting the whole field with tons of weed killer. A technique that sprays the stuff only on weeds is almost certainly a win over that, by reducing total herbicide use, reducing herbicide that winds up on the crops, and eliminating the need for genetically engineered plants.

Still using poison

[tacocat]

It sounds cute, but they are still using toxins to do the job.

They could burn the plants using pinpoint fire, or a really large magnifying glass, or concentrated syringes of ammonia -- short toxicity with a biologically friendly byproduct.

Non-toxic and the plants will not build up a resistance

you need to go work on a farm

[sickmtbnutcase]

Good idea, but what you are missing is the fact that the ground only holds so much in amount of nutients, water, etc, and even if some plants give back some nutrients to the soil while growing, the secondary plants will just be competition to the primary crop, resulting in stunted yields. Also, with the height that corn grows, it would be virtually impossible to grow anything in between the rows, since the corn would block all the sunlight to the shorter plants. The secondary crop would grow well until the corn grew taller than it, but in the end this hurts the very important early growth of the corn. This would also result in leaching of the soil, since there would be so much growing in such a small place, with neither growing to its full capability.
Or...farmers can just continue rotating crops every year like they do and adding only as much fertilizer as needed, keeping their yields as high as possible.

Did any Americans really read Silent Spring?

[ratfynk]

The main problem with modern agriculture is not the use of herbacides or, in some cases, pestacides. It is their OVERUSE due to MONO CULTURE, so called organic or otherwise. You can bet the herbacide industry, because of falling revenues, modern intense (organic) cultivation, and rotation techniques is just trying to sell more new expensive targeted patent poisons.

Problems caused by mono culture could, at least in part, be solved by robotics. The advancement of crop interplanting with targeted symbiotic and bio-chemical pest control of both invasive plants and insects with robotic aid is the way of the future farm.
Efficiency problems inherent with large scale planting, spacing, monitoring and harvesting of intercropped plants is the main reason why Farmers are slow to adopt these tested techniques. The exception is greenhouse farming.

Robotic intercropping research is not yet on the radar screen of the current American Government or the international chemical and industrial farming corporations. As long as mono culture dominates our food production, then we will keep up the vicious circle that is leading us to a silent spring.

There is nothing wrong with using chemicals. There is everthing wrong with not understanding how to use them from an environmental perspective. Life is afterall an organic chemical process.