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Roomba Inventor Launches 'Tertill', a Weed-Killing Robot For Your Garden
mcpublic writes: iRobot veteran and Roomba co-inventor, Joe Jones is a modest man with a big mission: to create robots that make agriculture more efficient, less tedious, and yes, maybe even one day feed the world. After a decade at Harvest Automation building greenhouse robots, his new team at Franklin Robotics has developed Tertill, an affordable, waterproof, solar-powered robot that continuously whacks weeds around your yard. MIT Technology Review calls Tertill "a Roomba for your garden." Today the Kickstarter campaign went live and already they are well on the way to their goal. According to the Kickstarter campaign, Tertill is solar powered, chemical free, waterproof and Bluetooth compatible. It doesn't actually pull the weeds from your garden, instead it uses a "spinning string trimmer" to trim the weeds down to ground level. Since Tertill will be trimming weeds daily, the company says the weeds will eventually run out of nutrients to continue growing, and therefore will die and decompose. How does it know what's a weed and what's a plant? "A plant tall enough to touch the front of Tertill's shell activates a sensor that makes the robot turn away. A plant short enough to pass under Tertill's shell, though, activates a different sensor that turns on the weed cutter. Because Tertill's approach is height-based, put one of the provided plant collars around short plants until they are tall enough for Tertill to recognize. When Tertill approaches the collar, it will recognize it and turn away."
I've been looking at robot lawnmowers recently. They require a bit more fuss than standard indoor robot vacs in that you need to lay guide borders and have outdoor power going to them.
That said, they're reasonably economical if viewed over a two year period vs a gardener. The downside is though - just mowing. So you're still left doing the weeding etc. yourself (or paying extra for a gardener).
Next step - add me a feature that can detect dog dirt and deal with it too. I would pay a lot for an outdoor-does-it-all device.
But we're trying to grow the weed!
Could give it a greasy italian accent too. "Ay-oH! weed ovah heee. Boom, i aint seen nothin"
I have a yard that is nothing but weeds. I need a robot that treats anything taller than it as a weed.
Will I hafta put a collar around every blade of grass?
that laugh at weedkillkers. That stuff can even dislodge concrete.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Weren't the first robots to go crazy in Runaway agricultural bots?
Tom Selleck smashed it in the opening scene... oh and a cute blonde held one over her head.
My weed isn't in my garden, it's in my basement.
As far as I can see this assumes that whatever you have planted is well-spaced, doesn't get bushy and weeds are well-behaved and don't grow too close to your vegetables. (In my actual garden none of these assumptions are true.)
Also, there's the problem that it can maintain a garden up to 9(!) square meters.
It looks a lot more like a science fair project than something actually usable.
Real life is overrated.
In my tomato garden I use cheap landscape fabric with 6" or more of straw over it. This works well & the weeds that can get through I can pull while watering.
Maybe an industrial version of this could help farmers with weeds like Pigweed. No more buying special seeds & spraying chemicals that the weeds will always develop immunity to. Interesting podcast from NPR's Planet Money: Pigweed Killer
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
It would be great to have these products to help out but can't do it after seeing the scary amount of telemetry it collected. Their privacy policy says - oh yes, you can not share with us, just don't use any of the advanced features (As in none). Nice.
are a dumb invention, all you're doing is spreading more dandelion seeds around. you need to capture that shit and rip the whole weed out by the root.
What uses is this in a "Garden"? Kill plants by height? That is useful in one instance only....when you are growing grass.
Also, I like dandelions, what good is a robot that kills those? Nope, wake me up when it identifies plants before killing them, then you have something I might care about.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
I dont want it to activate a trimmer and cut it. I want it to roll a wet rag on it sprayed with either a broad leaf weed killer or roundup. Dont spray. Right now it is height based, no vision sensor. So roundup is enough. Once it recognizes weeds from grass, it can use broad leaf weed killer that does not kill the grass.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Hmmm... if you've got enough open soil between your garden plants for this thing to wander, then you're gardening wrong! And if a weed appears right next to a desirable plant - which is all too frequent - what then? Also never mind that it's useless for a weed-filled grass lawn, apparently? What was wrong with mulch, which works fine when applied correctly?
He was heard screaming for a priest before he let loose and shot five. Before this, a negro waiter had tried to calm him down, but some gook said his brains just snapped, and that's when they finally called the police.
Isn't that just the Internet's perfect Echo Chamber of Things? No public criticism or questioning allowed.
Most weeds do not actually require sunlight to live. The roots of most plants have their own sustenance mechanisms that can leech minerals and nutrients from the soil to sustain the plant. This is why plants have roots. Duh.
Weeds can launch shoots from the nutrients they gather from the soil. This is why your dogs can run your centipede grass down to dirt and it will still come back. Every winter my dogs trample the centipede to dust, and every spring it comes right back.
The weeds may not bring up shoots where the Weedba trims them, but the weeds also will not run out of nutrients and die. They'll keep right on trying, and will definitely outlast your disposable, non-recyclable trinket that will break within a year and you'll throw away because it didn't really work anyway.
I bet the amount of power required to mow, scan for weeds and recharge would not allow it to handle very large lawns. In addition, weed species are different in different climates and zones. Even grass is different in different climates and zones that affects the blades. Some grasses are even considered weeds when they sprout in a lawn with another kind of grass. And some people plant flowering bulbs like daffodils, tulips etc. in their lawns and don't want them annihilated as weeds. And edges of lawns need special attention, especially next to borders with flowers and plants. Then there are false positives from fallen leaves from other plants and trees. And of course if you leave this robot laying around somebody's going to steal it.
So a collective hmmm is in order.
On the plus side it reminds me of a crappy Tom Selleck movie called Runaway which imagined a future with robots that would pick caterpillars off of plants and mash them up. I'm sure appliance robots will eventually serve a purpose but we're not there quite yet.
Like most successful automation, it works well if you can plan the activity to suit the tool. For instance, at home I just don't buy clothes that I can't wash in a washing machine, or dishes that I can't wash in a dishwasher. Once you're willing to make compromises, then automation offers some significant advantages. In this case, if you planned your vegetable garden around this, it could work well.
Of course people don't want to compromise. I think a major reason that Roomba's are more of a toy is people aren't willing to take the step of changing their living area to work well with a robot vacuum.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Roomba up to 700 & 800 series are dumb, just aimlessly wandering around until eventually covering the whole surface.
There isn't much data to collect, and the device only transmit wirelessly using infrared (remote control, virtual walls) and some ZigBee-like (to remotely start the virtual walls, and by the bigger remote).
In short: they aren't able to do any telemetry.
The 900 series is the only one with a camera, that has a concept of its environment (it can map it and has a notion of its position) and has wifi connectivity.
unless you have some really weird dwelling place, just get a 790 or 890 if you're concerned about telemetry.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How about making a Roomba that won't smear pet shit/puke all over the room.
In soviet russia weed kills robot
Sheesh! Hafta put a collar on the pet gerbil, hamster, rat, kitten or Chihuahua??? I can see the manic robot chasing any and all over the place till the battery runs out or the critter is dead of fright. I think I'll pass.
If so, I can program to rid my neighborhood of n!ggers, sp!cs, dots, and muzz!es.
Like most successful automation, it works well if you can plan the activity to suit the tool. For instance, at home I just don't buy clothes that I can't wash in a washing machine, or dishes that I can't wash in a dishwasher. Once you're willing to make compromises, then automation offers some significant advantages. In this case, if you planned your vegetable garden around this, it could work well.
Of course people don't want to compromise. I think a major reason that Roomba's are more of a toy is people aren't willing to take the step of changing their living area to work well with a robot vacuum.
Buy a Neato. It maps the room with lidar and cleans it properly. No need to redo the house for the vacuum.
Do you have ESP?
Its called a chicken. Get some for your garden.See: https://oldworldgardenfarms.com/2013/08/20/why-a-great-garden-and-raising-chickens-go-hand-in-hand/
He's obviously not a very good inventor if this is the best he could come up with. This is why we bought a Neato instead of an Irobot - much more intelligence. Besides, gardening is good for the soul.
If you look at all the comments on RobotShop.com about the Neato robots, you'll see a lot of 5-star comments that say things like, "it gets stuck every so often," or "it seems to climb the sloped leg of my table" or "I really love this robot, but of course you still need to vacuum with an upright once a week." Heck I only vacuum once a week with an upright even now, so if I have to go chasing a robot vacuum around every couple days then it's definitely not saving me time, though perhaps it keeps the place a bit cleaner in the in-between days. I'm happy with how clean the house is now, but I want to spend less time vacuuming.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I have waited 30 years to post this.
JB
WTF... No hyperspectral sensors /w fancy ANN fueled expert trained CV?
We want a sentient weed terminators on wheels that works anywhere even if it requires wireless streaming to a desktop computer running fancy CUDA code to figure out what to "delete".
This product is a crop out.
Yeah, but it's all about how much compromise is necessary.
It's really not difficult to choose clothing options that are machine washable, 99% of the time. When you get into formal-wear, that changes -- but that's usually where people are willing to live with the disadvantages of having to take that tux or suit to the dry cleaners.... They're not going to wear it every day.
Dishwasher-safe dishes? Again, not too tough to do that. I think I could safely say I'd accidentally have 90% dishwasher safe dishes if I just bought what I wanted without checking it first.
I owned 2 different Roombas at my old house, and it was a pretty optimal environment for them. (All hard-wood floors and vinyl flooring. Single story ranch type layout. Not even much furniture it could go under, since my coffee table and living room couch and loveseat sat flat on the floor. No pets.) Both units died in under a year and were always needing manual assistance. The dust bins are too small so they can fill up long before a whole cleaning job is finished. Batteries wear out and stop holding a good charge. The spinning brush that gets along the baseboards breaks apart and needs occasional replacement. Hair or lint always winds around gears and rollers inside and causes jams and other malfunctions. IR electric eye failed on one of them. Just not worth the hassle at all, vs. pulling out the Dyson vacuum and taking care of things by hand.
In these cases (clothes and dishes) the manufacturers of such items have mostly made things that are compatible with those devices. On the other hand, we haven't reached a point where any furniture manufacturers are making things that are marketed as "robot vacuum compatible". Plus, if you have to buy a $500 robot vacuum every year or two, that money can get me a long way towards a weekly cleaning service that's going to do a lot more thorough job, especially in some places in the US where inexpensive (and often illegal immigrant) labor is available for such jobs.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Broad-spectrum herbicides like Roundup are a major contributory factor to the ongoing collapse of the biosphere and the most rapid extinction of species that this planet has ever witnessed. Whether mankind will survive the collapse or vanish along with all the species upon which we depend is an open question, but what is not in any doubt is that billions will die when the world's food crops fail..
But what do you care, safely wrapped in your "capitalism can do no wrong" bubble of ignorance and denialism.
...and let the whole "random wandering" vs. "navitagion" in vacuuming bots begin !
(for those who were bored of vi vs. emacs (vs. nano vs. ed) )
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]