Along with being costly, herbicides can also harm the environment … so why apply them to a whole crop, instead of just the areas where weeds are growing? That's the thinking behind the Solix Sprayer robot, which spots and sprays weeds in farmers' fields.
Designed by Brazilian/American agricultural technology company Solinftec, the Solix Sprayer will be manufactured by the Indiana-based McKinney Corporation. Like Solinftec's existing Solix Scout robot – which inspects and reports on crops, but doesn't spray them – it's powered by four onboard solar panels.
As the Sprayer autonomously makes its way back and forth across planted fields, it utilizes a suite of integrated sensors to perform a "root to leaf" scan of each plant that it passes over. If the onboard Alice AI system determines that the plant is a weed, herbicide is selectively applied to it.
The robot also produces a digital map of the field, showing where weeds were detected and treated.
According to Solinftec, a single Sprayer robot is capable of managing up to 100 acres (40.5 hectares) of farmland per day, depending on field shape and terrain. Additionally, utilizing a lighting system and a battery charged by its solar panels, the Sprayer can operate 24 hours a day. And because the robot is much lighter than a tractor towing a "smart" weed-spotting sprayer, soil compaction should be minimal.
In its present form, the Solix Sprayer is optimized for use on grain crops such as wheat, soybeans and corn. Solinftec claims that in US trials conducted so far, the technology has been able to reduce herbicide use by up to 70%.
Plans call for the robot to be commercially available sometime next year. In the meantime, it can be seen in action in the following video.
Source: Solinftec
Notice how this robot rides high in order to straddle several rows like a tractor. Even though it looks tall, it can only drive over plants less than 6' (2m) tall. Field corn grows to +10' high. So for a significant part of the growing season, this robot cannot be used. Making the robot taller to clear corn would only increase its susceptibility to wind damage. The solution is to develop a robot that can fit between the rows.
As far as pulling weeds instead of spraying them, that depends on the type of weed and where it is growing in the row. Weeds between the rows are already cultivated out so we are only talking about weeds within the row. Pulling or "hoeing" them out would be mechanically complicated to avoid the crop. Adding that level of complexity at this stage of development is not very feasible. Weed identification is more important. I doubt if a loss of 70% of their market is something herbicide vendors are happy about. And a 70% reduction is probably very conservative. Reducing chemical waste on overspray not only saves on chemical expense for the farmers, but also on the need for expensive herbicide resistant GMO varieties.
This is a single task robot. Shrinking it down to fit between rows not only helps with weed identification (closer), but allows you to create a robot "tractor" with cultivation, planting, and harvesting tool attachment points in addition to the sprayer tool.
The PV solar panels can be removed. If you are operating under corn or soybean canopy, there is very little light available. Every single row crop field in the US has electrical lines somewhere on its perimeter. If the robot can recharge every round or so (even at night), the batteries will not need to be large.
Maybe it's because it would add more moving parts possibly making it break down more but it could also be companies wanting to keep selling the spray.