Near future
Contact us
  • Home
  • Tech
  • Health
  • Environment
  • Architecture
  • energia
  • Transportation
  • Spazio
  • AI
  • concepts
  • Gadgets
  • Italy Next
  • H+
June 28 2022

Coronavirus / Russia-Ukraine

Near future

News to understand, anticipate, improve the future.

No Result
View All Result

News to understand, anticipate, improve the future.

Read in:  Chinese (Simplified)EnglishFrenchGermanItalianJapanesePortugueseRussianSpanish

Greenfield weed robots will make us avoid pesticides

There is only one thing worse than weeds: the pesticides used to eliminate them. Greenfield deploys weed-fighting robots to avoid pesticides. What are they doing? Hoe.

Gianluca Ricciodi Gianluca Riccio
in Environment, Robotica
Share27Pin9Tweet17SendShare5ShareShare3
Greenfield weed robots will make us avoid pesticides
July 13 2020
⚪ Reads in 6 minutes
A A

The farm of Clint Brauer in Kansas, it could be described as that of Uncle Tobia, but with robots.

Along with 1.6km square of greenhouses, a flock with over 100 sheep and Warren G, a banana-eating llama, at Greenfield there is a troop of ten 60kg weed robots. What are they doing? They promise to make us avoid pesticides.

Brewer, the co-founder of Greenfield Robotics, grew up as the classic country boy from Pozzettiana memory. He left for the big city, but eventually returned to the family farm. Now it has combined tradition and future, because the farm is also the research and development headquarters for the Greenfield Robotics team.

Greenfield weed control robot to avoid pesticides
A Greenfield robot in action

Ritorno al futuro

When Brauer returned to his agricultural roots, he did so with one purpose: to demonstrate that food could be grown without harmful chemicals. Pesticides can be avoided by embracing practices that respect the soil and the planet. It did so by becoming one of the main farmers who grow pesticide-free vegetables. It sells its excellent products to local markets, grocery store chains and chefs.

Maybe you are also interested

Verdant, an autonomous urban farm that moves while growing food

Emotioncube, mini walk-in greenhouse: the first series solution for microgreen

Is the “robotic” agriculture of the near future a utopia or a nightmare?

Put the garden on the attic: the agrivoltaic discovers the green roofs

It wasn't enough to make a difference, though. A few hectares of vegetable production free of chemicals were nothing. Especially in comparison to the miles and miles of vast arable farmland that make up the majority of farms in the USA.

And this is where robots come into play.

Old and young farmers spend at least 50% of their time (and money) on controlling weeds. Right now, there are three solutions to the problem. None of them are perfect.

There is the good old human toil, an expensive and physically debilitating task. It is increasingly difficult to find help because, frankly, almost nobody wants to do it.

There are mechanical solutions, like tractors that pull plows, discs, shovels and motor hoes that kill weeds. But, as farmers have discovered, tillage disturbs the delicate microbial life of the soil, leading to decreasing yields and loss of soil.

Then there is solution number three: herbicides. They are still expensive, but cheaper than work, and they work. Where's the catch? The catch is there, and it is atrocious.

Farmers are choosing the chemical option overwhelmingly. A study published last month in the Environmental Health Journal shows that 1,3 billion euros in agricultural pesticides have been used in the US.

Glyphosate, or 'Roundup', is the most commonly used herbicide in the world and the one most consumers have heard of. It was designated probable human carcinogen by the WHO cancer agency as early as 2015. The independent research group The Detox Project reports that glyphosate may be an endocrine disruptor and it is unclear whether levels of "safe use" Established are safe in the long term.

Its excessive use has led to “super weeds” resistant to glyphosate and sometimes requiring even more aggressive and toxic substances, even for the very health of farmers.

The Greenfield robotic solution is based on a simple idea: keep mowing.

Simply no longer do it by hand, but delegate someone, sorry: something else.

The enemy number one

When Brauer started thinking about which grass to hit first, the purslane orelacea or amaranth was an obvious first enemy. It is the prototype of the nefarious weed: invasive, adaptive and resistant to herbicides.

A single plant can grow over one meter and eighty and produce up to half a million seeds. It spreads easily and farmers must continue to work to get rid of it even after their harvest starts growing, otherwise it quickly takes over.

Come on, weedbot!

Brauer has trivially discovered that if struck repeatedly, a few inches off the ground, the purslane eventually gives up the fight and dies. Well. There is a problem, though: if you mow a field of sour cherries, you are mowing everything. Including, technically, the crop you are trying to grow.

A standard-sized tractor and mower does not fit in soy, corn, cotton or any other wide-brimmed crop, which is typically sown in rows 75 centimeters apart. And a heavy tractor and lawnmower cannot go to the fields when they are too wet or risk being planted there.

Not to mention that to avoid pesticides, to weaken the growth of the weeds and to overcome their rhythm, one should stand there mowing non-stop.

Weedbots, mowing robots, are small enough to fit between rows, light enough to work in muddy fields and, the best part, they can do it alone. Also on the team.

Brauer contacted an old friend, Steven Gentner, founder of RoboRealm, an IT company. Teaching to farm robots seeing the rows of crops was relatively easy.

Large-scale agricultural production is already suitable for robots because it is already hyper-controlled. Large farmers plant straight rows that stretch for kilometers at exactly the same distance.

Weed-proof robots

Greenfield weed control robot to avoid pesticides
The staff of The Small Robot Company

Each weedbot has a sensor that allows it to detect depth. He can “see” the rows planted in the field extending into the distance, thanks to artificial vision. It can combine this capability with standard row spacing data, and update its location in real time with GPS.

The robot farmers advance

The Small Robot Company is a UK-based robotic startup that produces robots that electrically "hoe" seedlings to avoid pesticides. He obtained funds for 5 million euros. Founded in 2015 with a crew of four robots (Tom, Dick, Harry and Wilma), it almost immediately focused on the problem of weeds.

The Small Robot Company distinguishes between weeds and crops differently than Greenfield. Instead of relying on established crop rows that weed robots can see and follow, it focuses on photographic and scanning technology instead.

Robot Tom starts the process by scrolling the field and mapping it. This information is uploaded to Wilma. Then Wilma tells "Dick", the "digger" robot, to get to work,

Dick, which is the size of a small car, follows Wilma's directions and moves across the field at walking pace, identifying each weed seedling based on previous mapping data.

Greenfield weed control robot to avoid pesticides
Dick, the "digger" robot of the Small Robot Company

This solution is more complicated than Greenfields mowers, but allows greater capillarity.

In its first tests in Kansas, the Greenfield team encountered some unexpected obstacles: a shovel. A piece of pipe. A rock. When this happens, the robot shuts down the mower, an off-site operator intervenes and solves the problem remotely. Despite this limit, the prices of weed robots are lower than those of chemical solutions.

That's why Greenfield has raised $ 500.000 in funding for its weed robots, and is in the process of receiving another 8 million.

Even if robots could do nothing but control weeds, avoiding pesticides would have the potential to revolutionize agriculture. Come on, weedbot!

tags: agriculture of the future
Previous post

Russia announces: human trials of Covid-19 vaccine completed

Next Post

Will it be a better world in 2030? New forecasts for the future.

COLLABORATE

To submit articles, disclose the results of a research or scientific discoveries write to the editorial staff
  • BrintØ, an artificial island to produce green hydrogen

    BrintØ, an artificial island to produce green hydrogen

    148 Shares
    Share 59 Tweet 37
  • A plant-based, antimicrobial 'coating spray' keeps food fresh

    76 Shares
    Share 30 Tweet 19
  • Solar paint: where are we?

    378 Shares
    Share 151 Tweet 94
  • Liteboxer Bundle, the boxing machine for killer workouts

    763 Shares
    Share 304 Tweet 190
  • Move objects with thought? Telekinesis is a matter of technology

    141 Shares
    Share 56 Tweet 35

archive

Have a look here:

w-lab, self-sufficient cabins for the future of climate change
Architecture

W-LAB, self-sufficient cabins for the post climate change era

Si vis pacem, para bellum: a world of climate change requires solutions of contrast, but also of adaptation. The concept ...

Read More
Shopping of the future: how will we buy things in 2030?

Shopping of the future: how will we buy things in 2030?

The gym in a nutshell

The gym in a nutshell

In 2 months of testing recovered 1 year of cognitive decline from Alzheimer's

electric cars only since 2032 in the UK

The UK moves the bar higher: it only wants electric cars from 2032

The daily tomorrow

Futuroprossimo.it provides news on the future of technology, science and innovation: if there is something that is about to arrive, here it has already arrived. FuturoProssimo is part of the network ForwardTo, studies and skills for future scenarios.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Environment
Architecture
Artificial intelligence
Gadgets
concepts
Design

Staff
Archives
Advertising
Privacy Policy

Medicine
Spazio
Robotica
Work
Transportation
energia

To contact the FuturoProssimo editorial team, write to [email protected]

Chinese Version
Édition Française
Deutsche Ausgabe
Japanese version
English Edition
Edição Portuguesa
Русское издание
Spanish edition

This work is distributed under license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.
© 2021 Futuroprossimo

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Tech
  • Health
  • Environment
  • Architecture
  • energia
  • Transportation
  • Spazio
  • AI
  • concepts
  • Gadgets
  • Italy Next
  • H+