herbicide
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John Deere bought an AI company to optimize crop spraying
Want to know how pervasive AI is becoming in seemingly all facets of daily life? Just ask Deere & Company. The John Deere brand owner just acquired Blue River Technology, which uses machine learning and computer vision to target herbicide spraying at just the weed-infested portions of a farm field. The technology can minimize both waste and the amount of input needed while spraying, saving farmers headaches and money in the process.
New Illinois robot seeks and destroys pesky weeds
Oh robots, is there anything they can't do? Apparently they can now search for and completely obliterate weeds, which really is something that we've always wanted them to do. A team of scientists at the University of Illinois have developed a robot that searches for weeds, chops them off, and then sprays herbicide all over the weed stump. The as-yet unnamed robot (which we'll be calling the weedinator for the time being) packs a Windows box with a 80GB hard drive (including WiFi), stands at about two feet tall, is a little over two feet wide and is nearly five feet long. Dr. Lei Tian, the lead scientist on the project, says that his new robot will improve efficiency of herbicide use by being precise about the amount of chemical use. We're not sure exactly what the WiFi is for, but it's probably used to brag to nearby robots about how many weeds it's just fragged.[Via Robot Gossip]
