These Robots Can Kill Weeds By Zapping Them With Electricity

Weeds are a serious problem in any garden or farm and to deal with it, a startup has created three robots that team up to identify, zap weeds with electricity to eliminate them, and then sow seeds.

According to Sam Watson Jones, Small Robot Company’s co-founder, one of the said robots is called Tom and it is the company’s first creation that is farm-ready. Tom delivers weed mapping, one of the company’s commercial services. With these wild plants identified, it will be easier to kill them.

For now, Tom can cover an acreage of 20 hectares per day, all while identifying weeds from cultivated plants. After all the weeds have been mapped, the information will be sent to Dick, another robot that uses electricity to kill the weed by boiling them from the inside.

Dick will have its first field test next year and start providing commercial service in 2021.

This team consists of three members, Tom for weed-mapping, Dick for weed-killing, and the other is Harry for seed-sowing.

According to Watson Jones, with this technology, we are able to care for each individual plant, thus helping to tackle the pressing issue of world hunger. This kind of data set has never been built before and it may pave the way for more agriculture methods to be developed. The possible applications are planting different types of vegetation alongside each other, harvest them at different times of the year, as well as cultivating in line with natural cycles.

The company will launch its service of robots in the UK first and focus on wheat for now. Its future plan is to expand the tech to arable crops like rice, barley, and soy. Its service can be relevant in a lot of nations, including India, China, and South America.