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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

While it's nice that the robo-gardener is going to reduce pesticide use by being more precise in its spraying, it might be even better if the thing could be given a gripper to just yank out the offending sprout before it gets out of control.

Chuck it on the dirt and let it whither in the sun (since the bot is solar powered). The nutrients will return to the soil on the next rain.

It would be cool to see a herd of maybe 50 of these weed-picking robots ambling through a field.

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When I got started in the fertilizer business some farmers used to just band spray herbicides cutting two thirds of the cost. Then they would mechanically rip out the rest of the weeds using a cultivator.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultivator

What hurt cultivators was it needed to be done timely and the more acres farmed it became difficult to hit that window so it fell out of use. But what if a robot did the cultivation? It would only have to identify the crop and stay down the center of row, plus it could operate 24 hours a day. I'm not certain why that's a more difficult task than selectively spraying chemicals?

That's really agreat idea. If they utilized solar they could run the thing for next to nothing.

A weed on the dirt would likely grow in the new spot, and gripping is tricky. But to your point, what about just a spike or hammer or blade to just mash the weed? More simple than a grip.

Plants can be weirdly resilient to smashing -- various bits of plant fragments can decide to grow new roots.

Chuck the weed in a barrel and take it away somewhere to be killed. Apparently a compost pile will kill weeds (and their seeds) if at a hot enough temperature long enough.

You could also heat it in place. Propane is not really a pesticide, but it works nicely. An electric arc should also work nicely, even burning out the root.

There's already an effort to do something along those lines, not sure if it could be scaled up though:

https://www.franklinrobotics.com

I would hope that is the eventual goal...but even if the ceiling is precision spraying, the net benefit of it's use could be huge. This is legitimately one of the best things I've heard in a long time.

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