Robotic systems have transformed various industries, particularly in agriculture and farming. Numerous tasks that were once done by hand can now be automated, resulting in increased productivity and decreased labor for farmers and other agricultural workers.

Farmers are constantly searching for innovative ways to improve their practices, and automation has proven to be a valuable tool in achieving reliable farming. Two areas in particular that could greatly benefit from automation are weed management and crop monitoring. Farmers are seeking cleaner and more efficient methods for controlling weeds, eliminating pests, and tracking the health of their crops. By automating these processes, farmers can increase productivity, reduce labor costs, and deliver higher-quality products to consumers.

Recently, a group of researchers at the University of Bonn presented a novel robotic system that could revolutionize weed management and crop monitoring for farmers. The system, known as BonnBot-I, was introduced in a research paper. They designed a robot that utilizes GPS technology and odometry-based localization sensors. This robot can navigate through fields to identify, categorize, and tally plants and control weeds with the help of an array of tools integrated into its body structure.

“Driven by crop monitoring approaches which can accurately locate and classify plants (weed and crop) we further improve their performance by fusing the platform available GNSS and wheel odometry,” the researchers wrote. “This improves tracking accuracy of our crop monitoring approach from a normalized average error of 8.3% to 3.5%, evaluated on a new publicly available corn data set. We also present a novel arrangement of weeding tools mounted on linear actuators evaluated in simulated environments.”