I am really looking forward to the day we can replace chemical herbicides with weed-hunting robots. It seems such a huge market opportunity... little, inexpensive bots that can roam a field, picking out weeds the moment they appear as seedlings, never touching the crop itself, not putting anything in the soil. When I was a kid growing up in central Illinois in the 1970s, before Roundup, "walking beans" was a common s…
What is the energy source for that? Solar? Is it therefore possible to have enough solar energy to operate the machinery with enough to pull out and keep on going? And wouldn't you need a tremendous amount of batteries as well? Would seem there would be an environmental impact that could far exceed some kind of potential 'safe' chemical solutions.
Keep in mind the bots don't have to be very large; certainly not human-sized. Something the size of a roller skate, maybe, with specialized weed-killing tools. And if it encounters something too big or weird to handle on its own, it can mark it on a map and send an alert for human intervention.