Man Finally Makes the Weed-Removing Robot

Roland Piquepaille writes "According to the Ludington Daily News, Michigan, Danish agricultural engineers have built a robot to help farmers with weeds. The Hortibot is about 3-foot-by-3-foot, is self-propelled, and uses global positioning system (GPS). It can recognize 25 different kinds of weeds and eliminate them by using its weed-removing attachments. It's also very environmentally friendly because it can reduce herbicide usage by 75 percent. But so far, it's only a prototype and the Danish engineers need to find a manufacturer for distribution."

Re:Weed-removing attachments?

[dabraun]

By "weed-removing attachments" they better mean lasers, or I'm going to be mighty disappointed.

If you RTFA you will notice that lasers are in fact one of the "weed-removing attachments" they have.

Link to Hortibot project

[drgould]

HortiBot - A Plant Nursing Robot [hortibot.dk]

Doesn't look like they've gone too far yet, but interesting nevertheless.

Re:Weed-removing attachments?

[Frosty Piss]

it's ok as long as it didn't inhale, bush told us so.

Actually, that was Clinton.

Re:Lawnmower Robots

[farmerj]

Husqvarna [husqvarna.com] has produced automatic lawn mowers for at lest 6-7 years.
Look under products and automatic mowers, they have two types an auto mower which can operate 24 hours a day and goes back to it's base station to charge and a solar powered version.

According to the site the auto mower is good for up to 1500 m, while the solar version is good for up to 1200 m.
They both use a safe cutting system and operate similar to grazing animal, in that they wonder around randomly, with sensors to go around any stationary objects.
The parameter of the tended area is marked with a electric loop

So safe and easy, what are you waiting for!

This is what it looks like

[golodh]

See this link:

http://www.hortibot.dk/index.html [hortibot.dk]

Just get a herd of goats instead

[ross.w]

You may think goats eat anything, but they are actually particularly choosy. Depending on what your weed problem is, they will actually eat the weeds preferentially and keep them under control [goatworld.com]. They find things like blackberry [nwsource.com], etc especially tasty. Very important to keep them out of your garden though, because they also like roses and other flowers.

Of course if your problem is bracken, bring on the Robot. Nothing eats that stuff.