This Arduino-powered bot is so much better than your weed whacker.
Other than shoveling several inches of snow, there’s one outdoor chore that anyone would surely welcome robotic assistance: weeding. While there are already a number of plowing bots out there, thanks to one Maker, the daunting lawn care task may soon be taken care of as well.
A recent entry in MAKE and Cornell University’s Pitch Your Prototype competition, Maker Mike Rigsby has developed a 3D-printed robot capable of, you guessed it, picking weeds! While at first this may sound like yet another mechanism to increase laziness, weeds are actually a serious problem for farmers all around the world, and it’s only getting worse. Take for instance Pigweed, which can grow three inches per day, has become resistant to the dominant weed killers and threatens the nation’s soybean and corn crops.
Meet Nellie. She spots and plucks them the old-fashioned manual way, one at a time.
“To advance the project requires money for parts…
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Brian By Experience 