At the end of our tour of the production farm, Adam was showing off his new mechanical toys when he thanked us for weeding a number of rows. He stated “there isn’t a machine that can do that”. Now, there may not be… but maybe there could.
Now I know a lot of people’s idea of permaculture or natural farming may be mutually exclusive with anything involving a motor or electronics, and I wouldn’t even say that I would want too much of that involved in my own farming pursuits. But, if automation could help to create more food in a sustainable manner, I’m all for it.
Machinery and automation in the agricultural world showed up tied hand in hand with pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers during the green revolution. However, today’s advanced robotics (which allow for precise, accurate, and adaptive action) could be well suited to pushing away from these input heavy methods of farming.
Weedbot could be a device which spanned a planted row with its wheels traveling down the paths between rows. Cameras with recognition software would pick out the weeds from the intended crop or crops (be it a guild). A grabber arm would jab into the soil and pluck the weed out from the roots, give it a shake, and suck it through a suction tube to be deposited along the path or in a collection bag, all within half a second.
What Weedbot might see
This is not ground breaking technology (besides the literal groundbreaking), a search on youtube for production line robots will yield lots of videos of high speed machines utilizing an array of sensors and high speed robotic arms to sort out parts. Weedbot is also, of course, not the extent of these possibilities. As a mechanical engineering major it is not difficult to imagine (with enough investment) one or multiple robots which could perform all the functions needed on a permaculture farm. With enough data it is not even hard to imagine an automated process taking a plot of land from fallow to food with minimal human input.
This is not to say that automation can fully replace human designers, and the social-economic implications of such technology as well as our feelings in general about such an idea are a discussion on their own. But if we had to choose between watching gps guided combines (which already exist) reap a monocrop field of corn; and articulated robots planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting a permaculture farm full of guilds and stacked functions; I know what I would choose.
Edit: After further research, there are robots currently under development which operate similarly to what is described above. The Tertrill weeding robot (for small home gardens only) resembles an offroad roomba and can be preordered on IndieGogo for $250.
-Sean Leese
Mechanical Engineering and Environmental Studies student
UVic Permaculture 