“It additionally has omni-directional mobility, which suggests it may be extra environment friendly,” he defined. “Rather than having to journey to the top of the row and switch round, it will probably cross rows to the subsequent weed.”
The Boston Dynamics’ robotic is nineteen.7 inches vast, so theoretically, it will be capable of negotiate any crop planted in 20-inch or better row widths. Johnson mentioned that along with crops like cotton, specialty vegetable crops equivalent to broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, potato and candy potato might all be candidates for flaming weed management delivered on a quadruped robotic.
With a most pace of simply greater than 3.5 mph, Spot might cross a 40-acre subject corner-to-corner diagonally in slightly below six minutes. The size of time it will take to kill weeds in that subject would depend upon weed density and crop row width, Johson mentioned.
Spot does have his limitations, nonetheless. While he could also be extra agile than a wheeled robotic, he is much less power environment friendly, Johnson mentioned. The four-legged robotic additionally has an Ingress Protection (IP) score of IP54, which suggests it solely has a restricted degree of water resistance.
“It’s not constructed to work in wet situations,” Johnson defined. “It additionally performs poorly in flooded subject situations and might get tangled or fall whereas transferring in fields with creeping weeds equivalent to morningglory.”
Johnson mentioned the flaming weed-control system reveals potential for focusing on weed escapes in mid-to-late season that may be tough to handle with typical herbicides or different mechanical strategies. In the longer term, he plans to check the system’s effectiveness on a number of weed species, in addition to look into different weed-removal choices — equivalent to blades or lasers — that may be built-in into the robotic.
Johnson’s analysis actually provides brand-new which means to the time period, “burn down,” would not it?
Watch a video of Spot in motion right here:
Jason Jenkins will be reached at [email protected]
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