Australian farmers develop robots to weed crops

Australian farmers have developed robots that can weed crops.

More than 60 of the world's leading robotics engineers and academics gathered at Sydney University on Wednesday for the first ever conference on agricultural robotics and revealed that their new inventions could revolutionize farming.

Dr. Robert Fitch, manager of systems planning at the Robotics Center (ACFR), told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that he has developed a robot that can kill weeds.

"We set out to develop better ways to kill weeds, by developing small robot platforms, that are nimble and can slow down to stop and kill every weed, without causing soil compaction," he said.

"We could either pull the weed, laser it, microwave it or target it with weedkiller."

"I see robots as a far bigger picture in agriculture, a new paradigm, where we can throw out all the things that have driven agricultural productivity, and ask 'How can we use these robots to do things differently?'"

Australian farmer Andrew Bate, who has also developed robots to weed crops, said the new technology could revolutionize farming all over the world.

"We actually see robots as being simple machines that do simple tasks well ... the robots are simple modular machines that can be quite small," Bate said.

"Instead of a large machine that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, we're talking about a number of machines that cost well under a hundred thousand dollars."

"A lot of technology that hasn't been available to a lot of farmers is all of a sudden accessible."

Bate said he would be trailing a commercial operation by the end of 2015, but said it would still be some time before farmers could buy these robots. Endi