Laser Weeder Can Identify Weeds In Cropland

The company Carbon Robotics combines the deep learning of AI and robotics for a product called Laser Weeder.

Valerie Perez is a product marketing manager for the company. She describes the Laser Weeder as a nearly 10,000-pound, 20-foot-long tractor implement. It identifies weeds from crops.

We have a team of labelers that go through and label an image with weed crop, weed crop, and then it's shooting everything other than your crop, right? So all plants other than the crop. And that can be programmed for anything. So right now, behind us, you're seeing it shoot X's on little wood tokens, and that's because we told the model that the X for right now is a weed.

The Laser Weeder is currently being used for vegetable crops throughout the West, including eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, and Idaho. Carbon Robotics only introduced the product a couple of years back, but already has sold the laser system to growers in 17 states and parts of Canada. And the system keeps evolving.

You're basically buying into an ever-evolving product, right? You're never getting the tail end of the product. It's always the front end. And what that means is that our last software update, we came out with a speed increase. And what our software team did is they shortened the time between shooting a weed.

Perez says the Laser Weeder is being offered in wheeled and tracked versions to meet the needs of growers with different soil types.