In farming, weeds can strangle crops and destroy yields. Unfortunately, spraying herbicides to deal with the intrusive plants pollutes the environment and harms human health and there simply aren't enough workers to tackle all the weeds by hand.
A new startup called FarmWise has come up with a solution: autonomous weeding robots that use artificial intelligence to cut out weeds while leaving crops untouched, according to an MIT report published on Thursday.“We have a growing population, and we can’t expand the land or water we have, so we need to drastically increase the efficiency of the farming industry,” company co-founder Sebastien Boyer told MIT. “I think AI and data are going to be major players in that journey.
“Twenty-five years ago, GPS was a very complicated technology. You had to connect to satellites and do some crazy computation to define your position. But a few companies brought GPS to a new level of reliability and simplicity. Today, every farmer in the world uses GPS.