Agribots / Weeding Robots

Overview

SGT Agribots are autonomous tracked field robots that drive crop rows, identify weeds vs crop plants with AI vision, and remove weeds mechanically, with a low-power laser, or with precision spot-spray — cutting herbicide use by 70-95% versus blanket application.

Built for row crops (vegetables, cotton, soybeans, sugar beet) and high-value organic plots where chemical residue, labour cost, or both, are pain points. Robots run day or night on solar + battery, send live progress and weed counts to a cloud dashboard, and the farmer schedules the next mission from a phone.

AI weed/crop classifier — 96%+ accuracy on common species, on-device inference
Three treatment modes — mechanical hoe, low-power laser, or precision spot-spray
Solar + battery — multi-shift autonomy, automatic charging dock
Herbicide cut 70-95% — only weeds get treated, not the whole row

How It Works

Map — the bot RTK-maps the field on first pass, learns row spacing and crop type.
Detect — a downward-facing stereo camera runs U-Net segmentation + classifier on each frame (38 FPS on an embedded Jetson).
Decide — for each detected plant the bot picks an action: ignore (crop), mechanical hoe, laser shot, or 5-ml spot-spray.
Act — a 3-DOF arm reaches the target in < 0.5 s; the bot continues at 2-4 km/h.
Report — every weed hit and crop kept is logged, geo-tagged, and pushed to the cloud for the field report.

Features

Computer vision — RGB-D camera, U-Net segmentation, WeedNet classifier v6 (96.4%)
Tri-mode treatment — mechanical hoe, 30 W laser, 5-ml spot-spray nozzle
RTK-GPS + IMU — centimetre accuracy, headland turning, row following
Solar canopy — 200 W on top of chassis, extends runtime 30-50%
Auto charging dock — solar-fed field dock; bot returns when battery low
Edge fleet OTA — new models pushed in batches, rollback on failure
Web dashboard — fleet status, weed counts, herbicide saved, per-bot reports
Open API — REST + MQTT integration with farm-management systems

Use Cases

Vegetable rows — carrot, onion, lettuce, brassica weeding without chemical residue
Cotton & soybean — early-season weeding before canopy closes
Sugar beet & corn — high-value crops where herbicide cost is significant
Organic farms — chemical-free weeding meets organic certification
Trial & research plots — repeatable, logged treatments for agronomy data
Contract weeding — service-bureau billed per acre

Specifications

Chassis: Tracked, 1.2 × 0.8 m, 220-340 kg, IP54
Speed: 1-4 km/h working, 6 km/h transit; headland turns autonomous
Vision: Stereo RGB-D, 38 FPS, edge NPU 4-16 TOPS, on-device inference
Treatment: 3-DOF arm (350 mm reach); mechanical hoe / 30 W laser / 5-ml spot-spray
Power: 48 V LiFePO4, 4-8 kWh; 200 W solar canopy; field dock auto-charge
GPS: RTK base + rover, 1-2 cm accuracy
Comms: LoRa mesh + 4G LTE failover; bot-to-bot avoidance
Throughput: 0.3-0.8 ha/hr depending on row spacing and weed density