Small Robot Company is offering a service for Weed Mapping, providing farmers with a per-plant view of their fields.

Initially focused on broad leaved weeds (BLW), grass-type weeds such as blackgrass will follow later this growing season. Priced at £15 per hectare, the service will also map Emergent Wheat.

SRC will also be releasing an early version of its Wilma AI interface for farmers to view and interpret the data for decision support.

Identification of weeds in the field is possible thanks to the Wilma neural network the team has been developing over the last eighteen months.

Wilma can now detect both BLW and emerging wheat, following extensive training using tens of thousands of images from the last year’s data collection.

Work is now underway for identification of grass type weeds such as blackgrass, brome and ryegrass, the mapping of which is scheduled to follow next autumn.

It is anticipated that integration with existing Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) will help make current machinery more efficient, for instance for variable rate spraying.
 
“For the first time, we now have a per plant view of the field at broadacre scale,” says SRC co-founder Sam Watson.

Working in conjunction with Wilma, SRC’s Tom robots will be identifying BLW to:

Measure the efficacy of BLW herbicide applications by doing a post-spray weed count
Map weed populations to allow for focussed remedial treatments the following year
Inform decisions as to whether farmers spray or don’t spray for BLW, particularly in the spring