A Weeding Robot for Seedling Removal

Abstract

Automatic weeding technologies have attained a lot of attention lately, because of the harms and challenges weeds cause 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. Since the Rumex plants can cause oxalate poisoning in livestock, it is important to remove the weeds from the pastures. 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.