TechTour: Meet Dino, a robot that specializes in removing weeds

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Alongside its vineyard-weeding robot family member Ted; Little Oz the research robot; and market garden weeder Oz, Naïo Technologies now has a large-scale vegetable weeding robot hitting farm fields.

Guided by RTK GPS, and a set of cameras to ensure it stays between rows, Dino is electrically driven, lighter than a tractor and requires no human supervision. The robot can run for up to eight hours on a single charge. And at three to four kilometres per hour, it can cover three to five hectares in a day.

Besides its adjustable distance between wheel axis (1.40 to 1.80 metres), Dino’s tillage tools can also be changed.

According to Julien Laffont of Naïo Technologies, the company hopes the robot will see full autonomy in two or three years. Naïo will also look into creating small teams of the robots, and diversify field operations possibilities to seeding and spraying.

There are currently 12 Dino units operating in France, and the company intends to ship to California by the end of this year.

RealAgriculture’s Kelvin Heppner caught up with Laffont at Agritechnica in Hanover, Germany to talk about the robot, the company’s next steps, and its plans for the North American market:

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