Robot gets rid of weeds automatically and without herbicides

So you now you have to run your fleet of robot weeders over the field twice? That seems like a waste of time and $ when you could achieve the desired result in a single pass. every extra pass is also more soil compaction.

While it would be much more energy-efficient, such a process is bound to have a very low rate of weeds destroyed / minute.

I was amused by "A Bosch Start-Up" on the side of the machine. Now everything is a start-up.

I agree, but to be fair, you could even skip that and just have a remote pilot looking at the rolling video feed and clicking on targets. It still beats having people actually walking under the sun and ruining their backs to pull out weed, or blanketing with herbicide.

I'm not so sure punching is a great solution though. Weed is incredibly good at reforming from very very small bits left standing.

This is cool but I have to disagree with this phrase from the article.... "Given the scale of farming today, treating weeds chemically is really the only practical way for humans to keep them under control".

It's the easiest way to keep weeds under control but not the only practical way. (Source: I worked for the weed science department (yes, they had one at my school) while at university.)

Here are some other methods for reducing weeds:

1) Before planting, till and water the field causing weeds to germinate. Then harrow the field killing all the weeds. Do this multiple times if needed.

2) Good old fashioned cultivation as was done before the herbicide period. (The article on the robot was posted a few days ago and in response I posted the below... it has a lot of pictured of weed control devices which may be interesting to someone working on robotic weed control....https://archive.org/stream/SteelInTheField/Steel%20in%20the%...)

3) Crop spacing. Space crops so they out-compete the weeds (this is already usually done).

4) Keep fields clean. Keep the ditch-rows clean. Don't let weeds go to seed. After a period of time the bank of weed seeds in the soil is reduced and there are less weeds to control

I know herbicides are faster and cheaper (if we don't consider externalized costs). But they aren't the only "practical" way to eliminate weeds. It does take good management and more effort to eliminate or reduce herbicide use though. I personally think it's very worth it. Oh, and I'm excited about robotics. I don't know about this device, but I do think field robotics is the future.