A Weeding Robot for Seedling Removal

TL;DR

This paper presents a lightweight mobile robot equipped with GNSS, 3D vision, and a mechanical arm to automate the removal of weed seedlings in pasture fields, demonstrating the feasibility of integrated robotic weeding solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel lightweight robotic system combining GNSS, 3D vision, and mechanical tools for effective weed seedling removal in open pastures.

Findings

Successful demonstration of weed seedling removal

Integration of GNSS and 3D vision for precise targeting

Feasibility of lightweight robotic weeding technology

Abstract

Automatic weeding technologies have attained a lot of attention lately, because of the harms and challenges weeds are causing for livestock farming, in addition to that weeds reduce yields. We are targeting automatic and mechanical Rumex weeding in open pasture fields using light weight mobile field robot technologies. We describe a mobile weeding robot with GNSS navigation, 3D computer vision for weed detection, and a robot arm with a mechanical weeding tool. Our main contribution is showing the feasibility of light weight robot, sensor, and tool technologies in mechanical removal of weed seedlings.