Watching the Verdant Robotics hooded sprayer in action was truly witnessing gee-whiz technology. In the demonstration at Becknology Days at Beck’s, Atlanta, Ind., the machine — aided by cameras, artificial intelligence and machine learning — shot water at individual cover crop plants, simulating weeds. If the water were herbicide and the cover crop plants were weeds, the weeds would have died, leaving a clean field behind.
“We have 22 of these machines operating this summer,” says Chad Yagow, director of digital agronomy for Verdant Robotics. The company is based in Hayward, Calif., but Yagow is in Champaign, Ill., helping support machines in the Midwest.
Most machines are working California vegetable operations, but besides the one at Beck’s, there is one on a commercial organic farm in the Midwest, and another one farther east.
The technology creates a 3-D map of weeds, Yagow explains, and literally makes a virtual box around each weed. Then, nozzles shoot the right amount of herbicide at each individual weed. If a weed is larger, more herbicide can be applied.
What the machine won’t do is shoot through the virtual box around each weed. That prevents it from spraying a desirable plant, like a soybean, that might be in the way.
“Currently, the machine travels at 2.2 miles per hour,” Yagow says. “There is a limit of 196 shots per second per row.” Each pass of the hooded machine covers 15 feet.
While the sprayer isn’t yet ready for prime time in commercial corn and soybean fields, that doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future.
“Our next goal is to increase our computing power and make other changes, which will get us to 4 miles per hour,” Yagow says. “Eventually, we believe we can reach 8 miles per hour. Then it becomes practical for more applications, like commodity crops.”
Other developments needed before the machine is ready for commercial Midwest crop fields include updated herbicide labels for targeting or this type of spot-spraying technology.
“We follow herbicide labels, and we can’t spray glyphosate because it is not labeled for this use,” Yagow says. “However, there are other herbicides, like glufosinate, which are legal for us to apply.” Learn more at verdantrobotics.com.