Farming is all about the robots

The cost of owning robots might now be more efficient than your yearly purchase of farming chemicals

The robots — named Tom, Dick and Harry — were developed by Small Robot Company to rid land of unwanted weeds with minimal use of chemicals and heavy machinery.

Tom and Dick are farming robots that work together to kill weeds without using chemicals.
Dateline: London on a field in England, three robots have been given a mission: to find and zap weeds with electricity before planting seeds in the cleared soil.

The startup has been working on its autonomous weed killers since 2017, and this April launched Tom, its first commercial robot which is now operational on three UK farms. The other robots are still in the prototype stage, undergoing testing.

The Tom robot can scan about 49 acres a day, collecting data which is then used by Dick, a “crop-care” robot, to zap weeds. Then it’s robot Harry turns to plant seeds in the weed-free soil.

Using the full system, once it is up and running, farmers could reduce costs by 40% and chemical usage by up to 95%, the company says.

 According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization six million metric tons of pesticides were traded globally in 2018, valued at $38 billion. “Our system allows farmers to wean their depleted, damaged soils off a diet of chemicals,” says Ben Scott-Robinson, Small Robot’s co-founder and CEO.

Small Robot says it has raised over $9.9 million in support. Scott-Robinson says the company hopes to launch its full system of robots by 2023.

The robot zapping weeds with electricity. This supplement can reduce methane in cows and make farmers money

“It creates a current that goes through the roots of the plant through the soil and then back up, which completely destroys the weed,” says Scott-Robinson. “We can go to each individual plant that is threatening the crop plants and take it out.”

“It’s not as fast as it would be if you went out to spray the entire field,” he says. “But you have to bear in mind we only have to go into the parts of the field where the weeds are.” Plants that are neutral or beneficial to the crops are left untouched.

Small Robot calls this “per plant farming” — a type of precise agriculture where every plant is accounted for and monitored.

A business case for robots vs chemicals

For Kit Franklin, an agricultural engineering lecturer from Harper Adams University, efficiency remains a hurdle.

“There’s a realization that farming in an environmentally friendly way is also a way of farming in an efficient way,” he says. “Using less inputs, where and when we need them, is going to save us money and it’s going to be good for the environment.”

As well as reducing the use of chemicals, Small Robot wants to improve soil quality and biodiversity.

“If you treat a living environment like an industrial process, then you are ignoring the complexity of it,” Scott-Robinson says. “We have to change farming now, otherwise there won’t be anything to farm.”