New technology is being developed all the time for all kinds of applications. And new uses are constantly being considered too.
Look at the laser. Defined, a laser is “a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation.” (Laser is actually an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.)
That’s your trivia tidbit for the day. But lasers are being utilized for something not so trivial for growers – identifying and eliminating weeds in the field.
Talking up the LaserWeeder™ from Carbon Robotics at the most recent Great Lakes Expo was Brett Goodwin, vice president of marketing for LaserWeeder.
Goodwin explained that the implement started being used in 2018, and that as of the end of 2023, there were 17 units working in the U.S., Canada and Australia which have zapped four billion weeds across 100 crops. (As of December, there were three LaserWeeders in use in the Midwest.)
“Weeding is a costly, ubiquitous, ongoing challenge,” Goodwin noted.
There are usually three options on how to handle weeding: hand labor (which can be difficult due to employee scarcity and rising costs, factoring in wage increases, availability and immigrant labor). Consistency and thoroughness are also concerns with hand labor.
Spraying herbicides is another option, but that may have harmful effects on the plants you want to keep, with potential damage to crops and yield reduction. They can be toxic to workers. And weeds can evolve resistance to them.
The other option is mechanical weeding, which can have limited accuracy, as well as soil disruption, crop disturbance with crop root damage.
The LaserWeeder’s goal is to add another weeding option. The implement has “as much computing power as 24 Teslas,” according to Goodwin. “It uses 42 high-resolution cameras to identify a crop and maintain targeting accuracy.”
Eleven million individual plants and weeds have been labeled with the computer’s AI. Moving over rows, it can quickly identify a plant as a friend or a foe. The ideal time to kill a weed is when it’s smaller than a dime, but current technology makes that an issue, both manually and for herbicide, Goodwin said.
A LaserWeeder can shoot 5,000 weeds per minute. So why isn’t the technology more popular? “Because they really, really work,” Goodwin suggested. “They offer an 80% weed control cost reduction per year.” He noted that one LaserWeeder equals about 75 people hand-weeding (with humans averaging 40 weeds/minute). And lasers don’t need to stop – they can run 24/7.
“Increased production means higher yields, higher quality and consistency – and an earlier harvest,” Goodwin said. He estimated that the implement could pay for itself in one to three years.
An issue being tackled is the size of the implement. Last December, the smallest farm using a LaserWeeder comprised 350 acres. Goodwin said the ideal size right was 1,700 acres – a bit bigger than many of the farms growing a multitude of specialty crops in the Country Folks Grower region. The weeder is a large piece of equipment designed for 20-inch rows.
“Going forward, we will see it become more modular and we will see other lateral uses (such as zapping strawberry flowers for a transplant operation),” Goodwin said. “We may see other similar applications, such as helping to thin in orchards and vineyards.”
The future is bright – pun intended – for more uses for lasers in horticulture. “The future of farming is automated, sustainable, healthy and profitable,” Goodwin concluded.
To learn more about the LaserWeeder, visit carbonrobotics.com/laserweeding.
by Courtney Llewellyn
