Swiss Firm Demos Weeding Robot
Photo: AUVSI.
The company ecoRobotix is demonstrating a weeding robot, which looks like a wheeled table, that it says can reduce herbicide use by up to 95 percent.
The robot is powered by solar panels and can work up to 12 hours a day. It can be deployed by a standard tractor and configured with a smartphone, according to the four-year-old Swiss company.
“The robot is adapted to most types of row crops and performs weeding by combining an advanced vision system that recognizes weeds and a fast robotic arm to remove them,” the company says. “The robot is lightweight, easy to transport, deploy and store.”
The vehicle weighs 100 kilograms (220 pounds), at least in its prototype phase, light enough to avoid soil compaction issues. It can detect more than 95 percent of weeds, according to ecoRobotix.
The company plans to put the system on the market by the end of 2016.
