Man Finally Makes the Weed-Removing Robot

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to the Ludington Daily News, Michigan, Danish agricultural engineers have built a robot to help farmers with weeds. The Hortibot is about 3-foot-by-3-foot, is self-propelled, and uses global positioning system (GPS). It can recognize 25 different kinds of weeds and eliminate them by using its weed-removing attachments. It's also very environmentally friendly because it can reduce herbicide usage by 75 percent. But so far, it's only a prototype and the Danish engineers need to find a manufacturer for distribution."

Comments

Re:Weed-removing attachments?

[dabraun]

By "weed-removing attachments" they better mean lasers, or I'm going to be mighty disappointed.

If you RTFA you will notice that lasers are in fact one of the "weed-removing attachments" they have.

Link to Hortibot project

[drgould]

HortiBot - A Plant Nursing Robot

Doesn't look like they've gone too far yet, but interesting nevertheless.

Just get a herd of goats instead

[ross.w]

You may think goats eat anything, but they are actually particularly choosy. Depending on what your weed problem is, they will actually eat the weeds preferentially and keep them under control. They find things like blackberry, etc especially tasty. Very important to keep them out of your garden though, because they also like roses and other flowers.

Of course if your problem is bracken, bring on the Robot. Nothing eats that stuff.