Please add a feature where it makes a "pew" sound every time it fires.

I still remember a comment from a few years ago about the first few experimental farming robots:

> There is no way robots can replace herbicides. How would a robot pull out each individual weed? This would take ages

I am curious if this ever gets widely adopted but good to see we might have another alternatives to herbicides in the future.

10,000 years from now archeologists and evolutionary biologists will work together to try to understand why a bunch of weed species suddenly seemed to evolve laser resistance in this time period.

I wonder how fast and effective it is compared to alternatives. I know the article rderences 80% savings, but where does that come from? Labor? Chemicals? Efficiency?

A robot with killer lasers. What could go wrong?

I bet that 200,000 number sounds like a lot of weeds to non-farmers.

I've already seen this on love death and robots, didn't end well!

For reference the rate is something like a few square acres an hour, it's hilariously slow for even small scale farms

Having dealt with cutting lasers in the past, I can say that maintaining them is a PITA with misalignments, power fluctuations, calibrations, and part replacement. Doing all of that for 30 lasers seems like a huge pain and expensive. Maybe they can resolve some of those issues.

I don't think one of these would survive the night running 24/7 by itself. Never underestimate the destruction of teenagers in rural areas with absolutely nothing to do.

Monsanto be like uhhh that “laser” cross contaminated.

i need this for my yard

OMG!!! This CEO’s comments are so cliche “MBA Speak” it was distracting from the company’s actual accomplishments!!!

HEY! Mr. CEO!! Talk about this wonderful tool sans-‘MBA-Speak’!! It’s really cool to see A.I. used in a practical way!!!(It REALLY is!!)

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I skimmed it but am unclear about whether it eliminates the need for herbicides.

Similar methods have been used since at least the 1950’s that do not require lasers. You can search ‘cultivator tractor flame weeder’ on youtube to see some of the more exciting examples. Flames are not required either. ‘Basket weeders’ are another neat type to look up. There are plenty of mechanical implements that due the same job. All of these implements just require that crops be planted in perfectly straight rows so that all spaces around the growing crop can be disturbed to destroy weeds.

Cultivator tractors and an endless array of ingenious attachments were supposed to be the way of the future until the chemical industry bloomed and took over the agricultural sector. They are now relegated to small scale organic farmers which is a shame.

And how long will it be until it classifies us as weeds????

So that’s what that gunship in Terminator had evolved from.

With push mower attachment.

Was talking to someone the other day about their studies and at their university they are building two machines for weeds, one with heaps of hands that pull them out to try get roots and another that does targeted spraying.

SO NO MORE MONSANTO CANCER SPRAY... RIGHT???

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human == subClass.weed;

Potentially, the algorithm that differentiates weed from plants could be made Subscription based

Why tho? The life in the soil increases fungal activity through biodiversity. If modern ag wasn’t killing the soil it could actually benefit from a few “weeds”.

Stop treating Round Up like it's the red headed step child!

I wonder how many ground critters like mice,bugs worms etc are killed by it

It’s not an improvement on failed farming techniques that deplete soils that sometimes takes thousands to millions of years to form in short generations.

There was a number I read. That’s right… (likely incorrectly recalled)

A rock or tree with a thousand years of untouched lichenous growth contributes to only a centimetre of soil.

I actually think that number is optimistic, but lichens do act as little air filters, so maybe they are strong net contributors to soil accretion, as they capture airborne particles much as in water filter feeders and fan growths with commensal bacterial colonies contribute to reducing suspensions that make water murky.

I don’t see many of those laser beams creating topsoil. Only some ash, of limited value, not even making biochar or coal. It might be different if the foliage was incredibly diverse and the laser beams were simply snipping off leaves and seeds and flowers of weeds or supporting species to fall to create a natural cover to the soil to improve moisture retention.

Actually, that doesn’t work if the beams shoot out.

Uhhh, you need a mechanical arm than has a small horseshoe on it. It shoots a laser that acts like a simple knife. The beam is captured to avoid splaying around. The plant may have the stem sprayed to improve beam absorption. Woody stems are cut and stored. The beam cuts the softer stems making the foliage fall. A few drops of biochar from previously collected and processed woody stems is dropped.

The ground gets a mulch cover with biochar that encourages insects as carriers of mycelium and bacteria that improve soil qualities and biodegrade the fallen plant material. Rock dust in solution can be sprayed or squirted in a hard forming gel to compensate for time constraints (no thousands of years of erosion in one season), and lack of flooding events that would usually replenish silts that increase nutrition.

The multiple species means nitrogen fixing bacteria can be encouraged as I read that many plants grow better when supporting species have merged root networks, reducing the need to add nitrogen to the soil using synthetic fertilisers.

There’s an increase in complexity and some risk from insect and other loss from their potential spreading of plant diseases. But with rapid response and in field mobile devices for disease ID and seeking treatment approaches those risks are far less than they they were only a decade ago.

There is l also likely a substantial benefit in the access to finance as banks may negotiate lower interest loans due to the soil scientifically demonstrated as being supportive of valuable agricultural efforts for longer periods before depletion. Or even negative financing where you’re paid to caretake soils that are in need of remedial efforts which require intelligent intervention, while producing food as well.

The machinery depicted is not as useful as it seems, it’s more sci-fi fantasy as it’s expensive and itself is very destructive to manufacture and maintain and deliver and recycle. I wager most soils become worthless when treated like this for too long! ‘Ok, lasers engaged, soil must die! Dirt you become!’

But where populations don’t enable people to do the field work as there aren’t enough, a machine might be scalable. You’d highlight the machines limitations. They are by nature inadequate and less superior to people of health. So to avoid people becoming dissuaded or lazy and arrogant you would ensure that market would highlight how the machine is a limited aid for specific circumstances only, and that a person on a small handholding which has a high population would get good results from using hand held cutters to manually trim the species to create the ground cover, or simpler machines that don’t need massive teams and industry sprawl to maintain them.

Banks and financial organisations can encourage a balance that puts soil and water conservation first to maintain the asset that grants life to society, by paying more attention to soil remediation techniques, and linking borrowers or users of credit to organisations that promote sustainability over millennia not years or decades.

Laser beams, not nearly as useful as they seem…