Carbon Robotics Develops Robot Capable of Eliminating 100,000 Weeds Per Hour With Lasers

By FreshPlaza

The Carbon Robotics company has developed an agricultural robot capable of eliminating 100,000 weeds an hour through the use of precision lasers and artificial intelligence systems, reports FreshPlaza.

According to Fast Company, this novel machine equipped with artificial intelligence has 12 high-resolution cameras that point to the rows of crops: the images are sent to the intelligent system, which is capable of identifying plants in real-time. When a weed is detected, a laser flashes and instantly kills it.

“I think this will be the biggest herbicide revolution in agriculture,” stated James Johnson, a fourth-generation farmer who runs the New Mexico farm that tested the robot this year.

According to Greenpeace data, in 2015 the World Health Organization (WHO) classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans. Scientists also suspect that it is an endocrine disruptor that negatively affects fertility. However, nearly 127 million liters of glyphosate, the active ingredient in herbicides like Roundup, are used each year in the United States alone. As a result, many weeds have evolved to become more resistant to spraying.