PHOTO: AGRIFAC
PHOTO: AGRIFAC
SPRAYING TECHNOLOGY ▶▶▶
Intelligent sprayer targets individual weeds
The occurrence of weeds does not always justify blanket application. Precisely targeting small bursts of herbicide is a treatment that has become a reality thanks to digital detection and sprayer control technologies.
S BY PETER HILL
pot spraying to target individual weeds is no longer a distant research ambition but a reality. Commercial systems are becoming available for
conventional sprayers as well as a future gen- eration of autonomous weed controlling ro- bots. Much of the pioneering work in this area was carried out in the 1990s at Britain’s Silsoe Research Institute. It investigated the practi- calities of using GPS to map weed species that typically grow in clumps or patches. Research into this ‘patch spraying’ approach treating 2x4m ‘cells’ with different herbicide doses
ended with the institute’s closure in 2006. But the knowledge gained was maintained through the private technology company formed by ex-Silsoe researchers Nick Tillett and Tony Hague, who today develop and man- ufacture computer vision technology, mainly for weed control. “Inter-row guidance of culti- vators between crop rows where a farmer wishes to reduce herbicide input is the most common application for our technology,” says Dr Tillett.
Video image analysis However, the latest application for Tillett & Hague Technology’s video image analysis
The Bilberry technology used by Agrifac for its AiCPlus system uses RGB colour cameras to dis- tinguish weeds in crops by plant shape, structure and contrast.
14 ▶ FUTURE FARMING | 24 May 2019
system is the Robocrop Spot Sprayer from Zürn Garford. It is designed for weed control situa- tions such as rogue potatoes growing amongst carrots, parsnips, onions and leeks. Unlike the image analysis used for inter-row and with- in-row hoeing, which detects crop rows for the former and also individual plants within the row for the latter, Spot Sprayer imaging searches for clumps of vegetation that do not conform to the crop row characteristic. These objects are tracked as they pass down through the camera field of vision, to trigger the rele- vant nozzles on a spray bar to deliver a meas- ured quantity of herbicide. Through the Robocrop user interface, opera- tors can select the minimum weed clump size and a percentage area of the plant size as the target; together with an adjustable nozzle on/ off period starting at just 30 milliseconds. A minimum target area of only 40mm (1.5 inch)
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