Hoe-equipped robots show farmers the possible future of weed control

Fast Read

Several dozen robots are working this summer in the agricultural fields of the Red River Valley. Four-wheeled, solar-powered vehicles destroy weeds as they slowly pass through sugar beet fields. Farmers hope these machines can help combat pesticide-resistant weeds.

In a sugar beet field a few miles east of Moorhead, small four-wheeled robots navigate the rows of beets.

Powered by a solar panel, the robots use cameras to spot weeds, then guide sharp hoes to pull them out of the ground.

This is the first year that Aigen, based in Redmond, Washington, has deployed the weeding robots.

“What we’re doing is using a method that’s been used for thousands of years,” said Chris Benner, Aigen’s director of field operations. “Just a hoe to pull them (weeds) out of the ground, with a little extra technology built in.”

Today, farmers use herbicides to prevent weeds from crowding out their crops. But nature is very adaptive and weeds are increasingly resistant to pesticides.

Kochia and waterhemp are two common weeds with widespread resistance to herbicides.

A single surviving plant can spread thousands of seeds to grow more resilient weeds.

Weeding robots are designed to be simple. The goal is to let go of them and forget about them.

However, during this first year of deployment, teams of operators and engineers work from trailers in the fields, monitoring the robots and tweaking the software and hardware to improve performance.

Robot weeders look simple as they roll through a field of sugar beets at an easy walking pace. There is a solar panel, four wheels, cameras and two sharp blades on poles.

What is not visible is the artificial intelligence that operates the machine.

“Trying to understand what a sugar beet is, what a weed is, and then couple that with the ability to hit it while it’s moving, that connection between software and hardware is a very difficult thing to do. do,” Benner said while watching film. robot work. “It’s definitely the core of what makes the system work.”

Rich Wurden, co-founder and chief technology officer of Aigen, is among the people working in a trailer full of technology at the edge of a farm field. The former Tesla engineer started the company after a relative who farms in the Red River Valley told him about the problem of herbicide resistance.

Reducing the use of pesticides is a primary objective of the company.

“There just aren’t a lot of good alternatives to chemicals,” he said. “Right now, we’re seeing herbicide resistance and herbicide immunity. And there is no resistance to a steel tool.

Aigen brought 50 robots to the Red River Valley this summer. They only work in the sugar beet fields. It takes about 10 robots to patrol a 160-acre field. They can weed the entire field in a week, from sunrise to sunset. Then they start again.

The company has kept a low profile, but Wurden said there is a waiting list of farmers wanting to try robots.

“We’ve had to say no to a lot more farmers than we’ve said yes to,” he said. “We have done very little advertising because there is so much interest in controlling herbicide-resistant weeds.”

The goal is to scale up to 500 robots next year and also start operating the machines in the soybean fields. Ultimately, the company wants to build a manufacturing plant in the Midwest so that machines can be built closer to a primary market.

Neil Rockstad is an Ada farmer and president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association. Robots are working in one of his fields and he likes what he sees.

“I think they’re doing a great job,” he said. “I guess we’ll know the results in a few weeks as to how effective the weed control is, but my first response is that everything looks really good.”

Rockstad remembers the days when migrant farm workers armed with hoes controlled weeds in sugar beet fields. Next, sugar beets were genetically modified to be immune to the herbicide Roundup. This ended manual labor and weed control was simplified, until weeds evolved to resist Roundup and other similar herbicides.

Rockstad will evaluate robot efficiency and cost per acre before committing to a robotic future. But he has high hopes of being able to reduce the use of herbicides in the future.

“I would love to live in a world where robotic weed eaters took care of everything and I didn’t need to spray a single acre, and I think the consumer would appreciate that,” Rockstad said. “I don’t know if we can get there, but I’m certainly not ruling anything out when it comes to technology and our future.”

This is unlikely to happen in the near future. The robots are still learning. This year’s wet weather taught engineers hard lessons about the sticky clay of the Red River Valley.

But Wurden finds that the systems are improving every day, and the company focuses on ironing out bugs before expanding. The idea is to have a truly autonomous machine that will operate on its own and send a message in the event of a breakdown.

“We want to make sure farmers really like what we’re doing before we start expanding it,” Wurden said.

“It’s pretty impressive how quickly they can take that photo, process that information and then hit a weed,” said Moorhead farmer Trent Eidem.

Eidem worries about the cost of purchasing or leasing the robots, but he’s eager to see how the company develops the machines.

“I think a few years ago agriculture was slow to adapt technology and that’s not the case today,” Eidem said. “Agriculture is a very technology-friendly industry and everyone wants to take advantage of what they can do to have a successful season.”

In addition to plans to move the robots into soybean fields next summer, the company is developing other tools that it hopes will add value to the machine. Robots could be used to test soil nutrients or scan plants for early signs of disease.

And in the off-season, Benner said, the solar panels can generate electricity to power the farm’s workshop.