Agriculture is Currently being Weeded by Enormous Robot Tractors

The goal of using semi-autonomous farming tractors in agricultural fields in the southwestern United States is to remove weeds without resorting to the use of herbicides.

When You opt to purchase organic fruits, vegetables, or nuts in the future, it’s possible that a massive weed-whacking robot was responsible for their production. In agricultural areas across the states of California and Arizona, semi-autonomous farming equipment is exploring the fields, finding weeds, and meticulously snipping them to prevent the use of herbicides.

FarmWise, a startup that was co-founded by Sebastien Boyer, an MIT alumnus, is the company that manufactures the robots. As Boyer was doing research on machine vision and machine learning, he got curious about the ways in which these technologies interface with the realities of the environment and agriculture. He came up with the concept of equipping agricultural machinery with machine vision in order to make it possible for weeding to be done automatically. Soon after that, the university’s seed fund, which is called MIT Sandbox, provided him with a tiny stipend so that he could bring the concept into the real world.. Soon after, FarmWise was established with the assistance of a graduate of Stanford University.

In the year 2021, FarmWise introduced the world to its very first robot known as the Titan. The Titan is an enormous chunk of metal that has the appearance of a tractor with an attachment mounted on the front of it, however, it does not come with a seat for the driver. Instead, it is controlled by an operator who walks beside the robot while using an iPad to give instructions. The Titan can simultaneously trace five or six rows at once, and it employs machine and sensor vision to differentiate between crops and weeds as it does so. Its cultivation blades swiftly respond by devising and putting into action a strategy to snip the weeds within a distance of crops with a height of less than one inch without compromising the crops’ quality.

FarmWise has been renting Titan weed-eaters to farmers on an as-needed basis rather than selling them, following a robot-as-a-service (RaaS) business model. 15 of the huge robots are currently making the rounds in the southwest of the USA at around 30 farms.

Currently, FarmWise is hard at work on getting its second robot, the Vulcan, ready for release. Because it is much lighter than the one that came before it and can be hauled by a tractor, the Vulcan makes it much simpler for farmers to incorporate FarmWise’s system into their operations. This machine, much like the Titan, employs FarmWise’s Ag Vision System, which is described as a “combination of the camera, the illumination, and the computing elements in a tightly integrated system,” to identify weeds and plot its assault without causing any damage to the actual crops.

Weeds have unfortunately always been a problematic component of agricultural production because they pose a danger to crop yields if they are not removed from the field or trimmed off as soon as possible. In this regard, farms normally have two options available to them: the first is to make use of herbicides, and the second is to employ personnel to deal with the weeds. Yet, the use of pesticides is prohibited by the ever-valuable “organic” designation because these chemicals are harmful to both humans and pollinators. The cost of human labor, on the other hand, can escalate somewhat rapidly. without resorting to the use of chemical treatments, FarmWise intends to be able to provide an alternative that is more cost-effective for weed control.

Henry Chesbrough

A professional in the field of gaming and technology, Henry Chesbrough is an expert. In addition to contributing to TechMagz.co.uk and a few other well-known blogs, he is a frequent writer from the United Kingdom. What he is most interested in doing is reviewing games and various mobile applications. Additionally, he writes and provides advice on a variety of business concepts.

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