A new robot created in Nova Scotia may mean farmers could get some help tackling troublesome weeds in their fields.
This month, Nexus Robotics, a technology startup based in Dartmouth, N.S., won the weed-and-feed competition at the agBOT Challenge, an international showdown between agricultural robots in Rockville, Ind.
Dubbed R2 Weed2 or Hal-Bot, the autonomous machine uses artificial intelligence to distinguish between weeds and crops and is designed to both pluck weeds and spray herbicide.
“We want to get rid of the weed and keep the crop and even fertilize it. So one of the advancements … we made is vision systems can be better than humans at distinguishing them,” said Thomas Trappenberg, part of the small team behind the battery-powered robot.
VIDEO: Halifax startup