TWO NEW TECHNIQUES TO CONTROL BROAD-LEAVED DOCK

Electric weeding

Medium size robot. Operation through farm contractor.

Farmer notifies contractor that needs to clean pasture.

Contractor brings a robot, set it in motion and leaves.

Using Galileo, robot traverses the entire pasture systematically and autonomously.

Weed killed with a high-voltage electric shock.

Once finished, robot notifies the contractor to come and pick it up.

Laser weeding

Small and less expensive robot. Farmer operates its own robot.

Farmer owns a small robot and deploys on each pasture when needed (several times during a growing season).

The first time, robot traverses the entire pasture to search for weeds. Robot degrades the weed by removing its leaves using laser.

Galileo is used to record the location of the weeds.

Weed killed with a high-voltage electric shock.

In ongoing robot deployments, stored locations of weeds are used to move from weed to weed.