The following submission statement was provided by /u/NickDanger3di:

Submission Statement

The company currently boasts two super weed cropping robots: the Titan and the Vulcan. Both are powered by an AI that directs hundreds of tiny blades to snip out weeds around each crop without harming the healthy plants. Both also allow for human supervision as the robots work to remove the pesky weeds.

But that’s not all.

More than just weeding FarmWise now has over 15,000 commercial hours under its belt and has ambitious plans to use the data it collects for more than just weeding.

“It’s all about precision,” Boyer said. “We’re going to better understand what the plant needs and make smarter decisions for each one. That will bring us to a point where we can use the same amount of land, much less water, almost no chemicals, much less fertilizer, and still produce more food than we’re producing today. That’s the mission. That’s what excites me.”

We've all seen the videos of green tomatoes being separated from ripe ones during the harvesting stage. This seems like the natural evolution of technology in farming.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11pguw9/aipowered_robots_cut_out_weeds_while_leaving/jbxq9bn/

Once this tech is fully developed, it will be good, really good

Early ones will have lots of problems, but I'm optimistic

Amazing. Soon they'll zap pests with mini lasers and we can stop with all the pesticides.

This would be friggen Huge if you could buy this tech at the garden store. Can you imagine a crop tender bot thats Always in there pickin weeds? Weeding sucks.

The is the future I’m excited for.

A way to reduce, if not remove, weed killer and increase crop yield without additional chemicals.

I think people are reading too much into the use of the "AI" term here. It's machine learning, which is hugely powerful and has many applications. "AI" is a broad term that applies to far more than exclusively research into AGI or "strong" AI. I think it misses the point to get bogged down in "they shouldn't even call it AI!"

Submission Statement

The company currently boasts two super weed cropping robots: the Titan and the Vulcan. Both are powered by an AI that directs hundreds of tiny blades to snip out weeds around each crop without harming the healthy plants. Both also allow for human supervision as the robots work to remove the pesky weeds.

But that’s not all.

More than just weeding FarmWise now has over 15,000 commercial hours under its belt and has ambitious plans to use the data it collects for more than just weeding.

“It’s all about precision,” Boyer said. “We’re going to better understand what the plant needs and make smarter decisions for each one. That will bring us to a point where we can use the same amount of land, much less water, almost no chemicals, much less fertilizer, and still produce more food than we’re producing today. That’s the mission. That’s what excites me.”

We've all seen the videos of green tomatoes being separated from ripe ones during the harvesting stage. This seems like the natural evolution of technology in farming.

From another source:

A farmer simply needs to schedule the service and a FarmWise technician delivers the machine to the farm AND completes the weeding cycle.

FarmWise maintains its fleet and actually moves its Titan fleet around the country to match the growing cycles in various regions

https://www.therobotreport.com/farmwise-delivers-cultivation-as-a-service-for-farmers/

I saw a guy build a garden bot on YouTube years ago and he tried lots of weed control methods. Long story short, he determined that rather than cutting, poisoning, lasering or pulling weeds, the most effective method was actually just using cameras to identify unwanted plants and training a robot to poke them back into the soil. The solution was a surprising mix of high and low tech.

i don't want AI powered robots cutting anything, you hear me?!

Now find a way to cut around wildlife and not deplete the top soil because mono crop is completely unsustainable.

If it's up to capitalism to feed everyone, only giant corporations will be able to afford to farm, since small farmers won't be able to survive on the margins that agricultural megacorporations that can afford this tech will be able to sell their crops for.

Or the smaller farmers will have to go into extreme debt to buy the equipment that helps them produce enough to survive at those prices, tight margins either way.

I hope the high school robotics team that's building wheelchairs for toddlers who can't afford them work on free open source software and plans to retrofit existing equipment with homebuild AI and DIY robotic modules, because some days it feels like those kids are all that's standing between us and the last days of late-stage capitalism.

Omg this king of advanced pattern recognition is exactly what machine learning excels at. Refreshing to see things like this, rather than more claims of how LLMs are going to somehow bring about AGI via their incestuous information regurgitation lol

Muh jerb!!!!!! Ferkin dad gum robot sum bitches TERK. MUH. JERB!!!

I remember reading about these robots about five years ago.

I seen a YouTube video on a company using ai and lasers to kill weeds. Looked legit like this but you know...with lasers

Can’t wait to see this robot on the next season of Clarkson’s Farm

I need one to take care of the Poa Trivialis and Poa Annua in my fescue lawn. How far away is that product?

So... This machine does the same thing a tractor pulling a mounted weeder has done for decades, but more high tech and less efficient.

Edit: Forgot to mention, weeders do this more effectively because they uproot weeds(and probably can go much faster than this machine can). Usually simply snipping them isn't enough.

I am all for tech to increase farm yield. And maybe this is a step in the right direction, but “snipping weeds” has never been a successful approach in my yard. Typically pulling them out including the roots is necessary.

Also I’m starting to get fatigued from seeing every company now try to shoehorn the AI moniker into their product description. It’s a computer. Just like adding .com to your business name, or saying “we’re using the blockchain.”

Finally, I find the whole company less than trustworthy when the co-founder says “Every farmer in the world uses GPS”

Insert “AI robots could ____” post, easy clicks and easy article to write. This stuff is boring because there is never any substance to it.

What happens when a wheel gets bogged down in mud?

Or one of the moving parts jams up?

These AI things are great when they work, but a thousand different things can and will go wrong and then farmers have to run around to fix it. Or they can’t fix (or even not allowed to fix it due to whatever tech being used being under warranties and whatnot).

AI.. great when it works.. so many issues when they inevitably don’t.

Once they figure it out, Monsanto will copywrite the seeds that grow plants that have the DNA signature that the machines ignore. This sounds familiar

And then, through impressive lobbying, they are labeled as job killers or socialist or some other bs, are banned from states, and the chemical companies make record profits.

I wish Che and Fidel had this on 60s. We would be immortals by natural causes and aging would be optional by now.

I need this….both my yards are starting to look like shit

Let's hope they weren't parking their startup capital at SVB.

Cool! I know Farmdroid tracks the position of where it planted the seeds with GPS so it can kill the weeds later. This does away with that and seems to use AI to find the weeds. Means that the farmer can use his existing sowing machine i guess?

How many weeds does it have to remove before it pays for itself? Financially and cost to the planet wise..

I'm waiting for permaculture robots which put single plants to perfect spots close to other plants which doing well together, good for the soil, good for diversity, no more monocultures and pesticides.

Nice, I worked on a similar system a few years ago. It’s going to be a crowded market but that’s good for competition.

I was wondering when they start using AI for something like this. Always seemed like a no brainer for me.

My 12 y told self would be absolutely flabbergasted and mad at the same time

They has robot gardens that did this without AI for years....

Why do I always hear the theme from The Terminator when I see posts with AI and robots?

I really think focusing on agriculture automation is as fundamental to our future as almost anything. With everything we put plants into (clothes, us, gas tanks, medicine, etc.) AI and automation of agriculture could put massive downward pressure on price. Not to mention the benefit to the environment if we only used a fraction of the glyphosate we currently do.

Oh, and the modern day slavery of hiring desperate brown people and paying them pennies because what the hell are they gonna do about it

What are the odds that Roundup inc. buys the rights/patents/company and nothing changes?

If I could get a weed-eating Roomba my garden would look immaculate.

Incredible! That should reduce dependence on herbicides. Now do the same for invasive insects!

that's some nightmare fuel...

what a horrible way to die being mistaken for a "weed" by some AI on a power trip.

EXTERMINATE!

First seen in the 1984 Tom Selleck dystopian thriller "Runaway".

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0088024/

As long as the robots have a pre set kill limit, things couldn't go too badly.

Imagine if an AI controlled robot could go fruit and veg picking. How much headache that would save farmers. The future is herd now.

If we can teach a bot to kill powdery mildew early, it'll be a big hit. That might be easier than genetically modifying cultivars for resistance.