It’s not your ordinary weed-killer. A massive self-driving robot can zap away 100,000 weeds an hour with high-powered lasers, allowing farmers to use fewer herbicides.
In the last two decades, the nutrient content in vegetables is down by 40% especially due to the use of harsh herbicides use.
Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell further talks about how farmers are increasingly concerned about the health impacts on people in long term. Without continually using the chemicals, the natural growth could possibly cost half of the crop.
So Carbon Robotics came up with a solution, a robot that can kill weeds by laser.
A self-driving farm robot that kills 100,000 weeds an hour … by laser.
On a recent episode of the TechFirst podcast Mikesell said this:
“We wanted [to] figure out if there’s a better way we could do this.”
“What we discovered relatively early on is that through the use of high-powered energy systems — so, lasers, which is essentially a way of delivering targeted energy — we can kill these weeds. And we can do it with the use of our computer vision and deep learning expertise … which allows us to in real-time identify what’s a weed, what’s a crop … and kill the weeds. Get rid of them.”
Poor food quality is a significant problem.
In an interview with Forbes, Carbon Robotics founder Paul Mikesell said soil health suffers from harsh herbicide use — and he wants the Laserweeder to create a sustainable path to organic farming.
Forbes reported that weeds are becoming more resistant to herbicides, forcing manufacturers to reformulate already potent chemicals.
“What happens to the land over time, where we wind up stripping out a lot of the essential micro bacteria that’s down there in the ground, we’re changing the way that things are composting in the ground, and it’s causing a bunch of longer-term issues with soil health,” Mikesell said.
In September, Carbon Robotics secured $27 million in investor funding to help with growing sales, customer support, engineering, and marketing.
Carbon Robotics said its 2021 and 2022 models are sold out, but it’s accepting new orders for 2023.
Watch it here: John Koetsier/Youtube
Sources: Forbes, Journals.ashs.org, ScientificAmerican, Carbon Robotics
