Weed-killing Robot

By Jodi Henke

magine a robot killing Palmer Amaranth in your field with a rotating cylinder about the size of a rolling pin in your kitchen and applies herbicide like a honey dripper. A University of Nebraska professor of chemical and biological engineering is working on it. Henk Viljoen’s goal is to spot-treat weeds in a way that eliminates the risk of herbicide drift, and also minimizes exposure of crops and soil to the chemical.

He says the first step in the process is flying a drone over fields, collecting images and GPS locations of the noxious weed. Those coordinates are then given to a self-driven robot, which drives itself to those sites.