Thor
June 4th, 2003, 20:11 PM
Weed-Killing Robot Shown to Cut Need for Herbicide
1 hour, 33 minutes ago Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo!
LONDON (Reuters) - A weed-killing robot being developed by Danish scientists could take the drudgery out of gardening and reduce farmers' need for herbicides.
The four-wheeled, battery-powered robot scans the ground for weeds and notes their position, allowing farmers to target their spraying.
The next generation of the robot will go a step further and deposit a few drops of herbicide itself on the weeds.
"But the longer-term goal is to avoid herbicides altogether by having the robot pluck the weeds out of the ground rather than poisoning them," New Scientist magazine said Wednesday.
In tests on sugar beet crops, Svend Christensen and scientists at the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Tjele, who designed the robot, found it cut the need for herbicides by 70 percent.
The robot uses a camera to scan the ground and a face-recognition computer software technique to find the weeds.
"Instead of faces, we describe the shape of weeds in terms of 15 different parameters, such as size and symmetry of the leaves," Christensen said.
But he added that much more work needs to be done because the scientists have to set parameters in the robot for 40 more indigenous weed species in Denmark.
YAHOO (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=6&u=/nm/20030604/sc_nm/science_robots_dc)
1 hour, 33 minutes ago Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo!
LONDON (Reuters) - A weed-killing robot being developed by Danish scientists could take the drudgery out of gardening and reduce farmers' need for herbicides.
The four-wheeled, battery-powered robot scans the ground for weeds and notes their position, allowing farmers to target their spraying.
The next generation of the robot will go a step further and deposit a few drops of herbicide itself on the weeds.
"But the longer-term goal is to avoid herbicides altogether by having the robot pluck the weeds out of the ground rather than poisoning them," New Scientist magazine said Wednesday.
In tests on sugar beet crops, Svend Christensen and scientists at the Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Tjele, who designed the robot, found it cut the need for herbicides by 70 percent.
The robot uses a camera to scan the ground and a face-recognition computer software technique to find the weeds.
"Instead of faces, we describe the shape of weeds in terms of 15 different parameters, such as size and symmetry of the leaves," Christensen said.
But he added that much more work needs to be done because the scientists have to set parameters in the robot for 40 more indigenous weed species in Denmark.
YAHOO (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=6&u=/nm/20030604/sc_nm/science_robots_dc)