AI Behind Smarter Way To Control Weeds in Vegetables
University of Florida researchers are designing a machine that can surgically eliminate weeds while preserving the tomatoes and peppers around them utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and sensor fusion. Vinay Vijayakumar, a doctoral student working under the supervision of UF/IFAS Associate Professor Yiannis Ampatzidis, created the smart-spraying system that targets weeds on raised beds of soil and in row middles, the areas between rows of plastic beds.
The smart machine’s movement is currently operated by remote control, but future advancements will enable it to function as a fully autonomous system, Ampatzidis says. The smart-spraying system can also be mounted on the back of a tractor or any other farm vehicle.
The machine itself autonomously sprays the weeds around the crops based on a computer-vision system that uses an AI-driven algorithm.
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So far, the prototype properly distinguishes 98% of the pepper and tomato plants and 85% of the weeds, Vijayakumar says. The machine-vision system then takes information from the camera and relays it to the spraying system, which sprays the detected weeds, while avoiding the vegetable crops.
“With this setup, we aim to achieve high spraying accuracy to cover the entire raised bed width while maintaining a spray strong enough to prevent drift and reduce off-target spray,” Vijayakumar says.
For more, continue reading at blogs.ifas.ufl.edu.
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