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Tertill Weeding Robot
- bigDICK 7y agoWhacking weeds is not going to be effective when those cuttings start to grow anew. This is a common problem we have in our garden with purslane when other family member's prefer to rototill the weeds. They claim that the weeds will not have any energy left when being continuously destroyed. I'd like to see proof of that claim. I'v had some success using a torch and propane tank but that is very time consuming.
- bjornlouser 7y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwTWhMbnq9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwTWhMbnq9g
- cwe 7y agoThanks for linking. I was hoping it had some kind of sea urchin-style mouth that ate up the roots of the weeds, but it's just a tiny weed wacker underneath. Still cute
- teekert 7y agoWhich means it never needs emptying and it returns the weed as nutrients immediately. It's pretty elegant in its simplicity imo. I guess scaled up a bit it could keep my lawn nicely mowed as well.
- icebraining 7y agoIf you have $2000 burning a hole in your pocket, Husqvarna already sells a solar-powered automower.
- cr0sh 7y ago$2000 would go a long way toward building your own robomower. Find a broken lawnmower in the trash for "bulk pickup" - free (getting it fixed might cost a bit of money, but in most cases, mowers get thrown away because the carb gets gunked up due to not being stored properly, or the air filter needs cleaning; ie cheap fixes). Get the base or motors/wheels from an electric wheelchair (this might cost a bit of money, but should be doable for under $200 if you look carefully). Various bits of steel, castors, bolts, etc - under $100.00 if you scrounge. RasPi Zero W, GPS/IMU, sensors, etc (ie, electronics, sans motor controller) - $100.00, maybe a bit more. Motor Controller - spend money on a good one, or money on the parts to build a good one. Probably looking at $200-500 dollars for a dual-motor controller. If you are really cheap, though, you can build a decent dual motor controller for the price of four 40 amp BOSCH relays, some wire, and one or two 40 amp DC SSRs; that'll get you a controller for well under $100.00, just don't expect great things from it. The rest is up to you. Granted, that's the hard part, which may be worth the $2k depending on your skills, time, patience, etc.
- reaperducer 7y agoBuilding a $2,000 lawnmower from $1,600 in parts only makes sense if your time has no value. Or if you tinker for the sheer pleasure of it.
- pavel_lishin 7y agoAlso, if you're confident enough in your coding skills to attach the code you wrote to a motorized vehicle with sharp, rapidly spinning blades attached to it.
- jedberg 7y agoYeah I'd be afraid of cutting up the neighbors cat.
- UnFleshedOne 7y agoA cat would either have to be dead already or your machine would have to be very fast and agile to catch it...
- ThePadawan 7y agoThe video calls "the typical garden size in the US" 100 sq ft (or 9 m^2). I find it hard to wrap my head around that number. If I had 9m^2 of green, I would never call that a garden. Surely this is the average, but not the mean? As lots of apartments won't have gardens at all.
- TFortunato 7y agoI think maybe they are using the word "garden" in the US sense of "part of your land sectioned off to grow vegetables, fruits, etc.", not "the green space in your land surrounding the home" which we'd refer to as the lawn.
- cwilkes 7y ago“Surely this is the average, but not the mean?” I think you mean (hah!) “median” at the end as average is the mean.
- dang 7y agoThat's more revealing than the submitted url https://www.tertill.com/product/tertill-weeding-robot/ https://www.tertill.com/product/tertill-weeding-robot/, so we changed to it. Thanks!
- jpm_sd 7y agoIt's really cute, but it looks sort of fragile and underpowered.
- markdown 7y agoYup, reminds me of those cheap solar toys you can buy on Aliexpress.
- dajonker 7y agoTLDR; you are supposed to get rid of all weeds in your garden first, then this little robot will take care of all new weeds growing out of the ground. It's supposed to be pretty much maintenance free and runs on only sunlight.
- amadeusw 7y agoAm I wrong thinking that after a few weeks of cutting the leaves, the root will become gigantic and will keep producing leaves at a faster rate? The only way to get rid of dandelions is to pull the ever growing root from the ground.
- tantalor 7y agoThe plant will eventually starve itself
- twic 7y agoHow does it remove them? Won’t the weeds just grow back? Tertill whacks weeds using a spinning string trimmer, which cuts the weed off near the ground. Because Tertill lives in your garden and goes looking for weeds every day, weeds are always small when the robot finds them. A whacked weed may sprout again, but sprouting takes energy stored in the seed or root. By coming back every day, Tertill never lets a weed develop the leaves it needs to replenish this energy, so eventually the weed gives up and dies. https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/ https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/
- TremendousJudge 7y agothey managed to invent something even more stubborn than garden weeds
- mtnGoat 7y agoits a war of attrition... keep taking the leaves and limit the plants ability to perform photosynthesis, it will run out of energy and wither at some point.
- drewm1980 7y agoTo truly solve the dandelion problem the robot first needs to convince your permaculturing european girlfriend that dandelions are weeds.
- tantalor 7y agoHow well does this do on slopes?
- neogodless 7y agoFrom the product web site: Will Tertill get stuck? Tertill uses four-wheel-drive. This helps Tertill move through soft soil, sand, and mulch, and also helps Tertill climb slopes. Its distinctive diagonal wheels make Tertill more stable on slopes and help it get past certain terrain challenges. Tertill relies on several sensors and clever programming to keep out of trouble. To detect objects like the garden fence and big plants, Tertill uses sensors similar to those found in many smart phones—the lightest touch is all it takes. To detect steep slopes, Tertill uses the same sort of sensor that tells your cell phone which way is up. Tertill can also sense if a motor stops turning—perhaps jammed by a rock—so it can protect itself from damage.
- bluedino 7y agoYou'd think it woudl use tank tracks
- pugworthy 7y agoWould get all gummed up with mud. But that's true of about any type of locomotion. Overall, this seems very much designed for ideal environments - smooth, relatively dry, etc.
- cr0sh 7y agoTank tracks have problems at a small scale that aren't immediately apparent at full scale. The big one - especially for something "in the dirt" - is dirt/mud getting between the tracks and ground wheels/idlers. This can easily stop the drive system, requiring user maintenance. Then there's the issue with water rusting parts (shafts, screws, etc). Also, more moving parts equal more things to break. Finally, on a small scale, tracks have a tendency to be easily "thrown" from the wheels depending on how turning is accomplished and the terrain. On a full sized tank or bulldozer, tracks still have these issues, but in the case of dirt, it can just power through the obstacles; dirt and mud may build up, and cause some rust, but the important bits are kept constantly lubricated. Any parts that do grind up the dirt just wear down instead of stopping (and eventually need replacement - very $$$$ replacement). If anyone cares to, hosing off the tracks with a water truck can also be done, but isn't likely to be done. Again, it all comes down to maintenance. Also, full scale tracked vehicles rarely turn "en point", because their tracks can be thrown just as easily as on the smaller scale, but cause more damage and more repair $$$ needed to fix/replace (plus doing it in the field isn't easy, either). The proper way to turn such a vehicle is to not perform such maneuvers, or if you have to, make sure you're on relatively flat and soft ground (that you don't mind utterly destroying - beware your wife's rose garden), and do it fairly slowly. The side load on the tracks and idlers will still be just as high, but throwing the track isn't as great. Usually, though, you steer in a curve just like a car, except using differential speeds on each track. There will still be side loads and "skidding", but the loads are much, much less (also, this is why such machines, whether tracked or wheeled, are known as "skid steered" or "differential steering").
- halis 7y agoWhy buy this when I have kids?
- TheCraiggers 7y agoThis thing is cheaper and doesn't talk.
- danesparza 7y agolol. So true. (One college grad, one still in college).
- EADGBE 7y ago> Tertill uses bluetooth to talk to your smartphone. Close, but not quite. Just wait for the 20 "I'm stuck" notifications.
- jcoffland 7y agoThe website really needs a video demonstrating the product. Edit: there is a video but it only show up on the desktop version.
- neogodless 7y agohttps://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/ https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/ The "hero" image/banner is a simple video demonstrating the "robot vacuum" behavior, in a garden.
- jcoffland 7y agoIt doesn't show up on mobile.
- KingFelix 7y agoTry this https://www.tertill.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/tertill-intro.mov https://www.tertill.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/tertill-i... I have used the Divi theme a bunch and I think if you watch the actual link where the video is you should be able to check it out.
- pajtai 7y agoThis won't work! The hardest place to weed is in the grass and around strawberries.... both of these can be just as short as weeds, and from the "how it works" page, it looks like it is using height of plant to determine if it's a weed. Got me excited for a second. https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/ https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/ "Tertill has a very simple method. Weeds are short, plants are tall."
- fenwick67 7y agoYes, it only works for tall plants like tomatoes, raspberries etc., but that doesn't mean it "won't work".
- giarc 7y agoIt works on smaller plants, you just have to place the collar around them.
- pajtai 7y agoI guess I meant, it "won't work" for me personally... and using height as an indicator of weediness seems risky.... at some point you'll have a tiny new seedling that you want to keep and you'll have to remember to work around your weeder... just doesn't seem as convenient as I would imagine it in my ideal world.
- majewsky 7y agoIf you only need to remove weeds manually in the first few weeks after seeding instead of all the time, that's a potentially substantial reduction of labor cost. Same with strawberry picking robots: It's not a dealbreaker if they have only 50% precision. That still means you have halved your labor costs (and time requirements) for the picking step (assuming that the robot picks in the night, then workers pick the remainder during the day).
- pavel_lishin 7y ago> at some point you'll have a tiny new seedling that you want to keep and you'll have to remember to work around your weeder. There's a metal guard you put down around small plants that prevents Tertill from mowing them down. The video does a pretty good job explaining the basic operation.
- Animats 7y agoOh, you have to put markers around non-weeds. It's not like the John Deere/Blue River weeding machine.[1] Or the Ecorobotics weeding robot. Those use machine learning to recognize weeds visually. [1] http://www.bluerivertechnology.com/ http://www.bluerivertechnology.com/ [2] https://www.ecorobotix.com/ https://www.ecorobotix.com/
- danesparza 7y agoThose are certainly cooler robots. And they are also incredibly impractical for the home garden. Sweet baby Jesus ... the Blue River Technology robot looks like a greenhouse on wheels, and not even a small greenhouse.
- Nextgrid 7y agoI'd choose a proven, 100% reliable criteria such as markers rather than fuzzy methods like machine learning which evolve and can break/behave inexpectedly over time.
- rmason 7y agoSo you will end up with a bunch of weeds inside your collar. Someone hasn't thought this through. I've walked a lot of fields over a twenty year period, weeds aren't always in the middle of the rows.
- noobiemcfoob 7y agoSo...you pick the weeds out of the collar? You've reduced the land you have to maintain to just that which this robot can't get to.
- jelliclesfarm 7y agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oWl6FD-7c https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oWl6FD-7c : there are many mechanical weeding robots for field cultivation. France’s Naio Technologies is my favourite. They are coming to North America soon. It seems like Europe is far ahead of us with robotics and field automation. In America, we have always had abundant cheap labour. Also, American Agtech is a data play and geared towards commodity crops. That’s not always suitable for food crops and speciality food crops and fruits etc. Edited to add: I guess tertill is for gardens. It’s not bad but can be better.
- pugworthy 7y agoI can imagine that when this rolls over a green hose, it promptly tries to "kill" the hose. And I don't want to think about what it does to slugs and snails...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- mattferderer 7y agoI'm curious if others who garden have really bad weed problems that can't be solved with mulch & putting stuff down between rows? I find cardboard or brown packaging paper between rows, & layering the whole garden with grass & straw reduces all but a few random weeds. I don't understand the value of weeding robots outside large agriculture.
- jedberg 7y agoThat method only works for about one season, and then you have to redo it all. I guess if you like gardening redoing the cardboard isn't so bad, but I'd rather focus on the plants and not the cardboard.
- mdellavo 7y agoyou have to redo the garden every season anyway
- jefflombardjr 7y agoI don't redo everything every season! I like to garden smart, not hard. Check out permaculture. Last year, I put down cardboard and mulched - planting strawberries directly in the mulch and piercing through the cardboard. Fast forward a year, now that the cardboard is pretty composted, the strawberries were established last year had root systems in place, broke through the cardboard, and beat most of the weeds. The weeds can't thrive because the strawberries are taking up all the sun.
- mattferderer 7y agoSounds like you have a similar effective way for handling weeds. My main point was that I don't think most gardeners have an issue with weeds in their garden. Side note, using large pieces of cardboard or packaging paper goes fairly quick. I wouldn't consider it hard or time consuming.
- 24gttghh 7y agoOr not weed at all and change how we think gardens should be planted in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/permaculture-gardening-creating-our-own-eco-systems https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/permaculture-gardeni... The robot seems practical enough though. At least it has solar panels built in!
- andbberger 7y agoThanks for this saying this. It's time to move beyond Haber-Bosch. It's been a tremendous force for good, but in the quote un quote developed world it is time employ farming practices that don't definitionally exceed the carrying capacity of the land.
- icebraining 7y agoCutting the weeds doesn't seem anything like tilling; in fact, cutting them and leaving the rest there as mulch seems fairly close to no-till.
- 24gttghh 7y agoThe little robot still drives around and compacts the soil a little. I'm not saying it's not progress, but is it actually necessary?
- grawprog 7y agoMany weeds are invasive species that are damaging to local ecosystems if they spread. https://www.invasive.org/weeds.cfm https://www.invasive.org/weeds.cfm
- jefflombardjr 7y agoMany invasive species thrive because we've disrupted the local ecosystem. The invasives are often a symptom, not the cause of ecosystem damage. This book does a great job examining invasives and their supposed effects on ecosystems: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25782048-beyond-the-war-on-invasive-species https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25782048-beyond-the-war-...
- tmaly 7y agoI enjoy working out in the garden. It is time to reflect and get off the screen. I don't think I would buy something like this.
- mikepurvis 7y agoDiscussion from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14715110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14715110 I maintain my position at the time: weeding is almost never just weeding. You're there monitoring a lot of different aspects of your plants' health and progress; you need to do that whether you're weeding or not, so you might as well be weeding. This is a solution in search of a problem, and none of these people seem like gardeners.
- bigDICK 7y agoMaybe, maybe not. Maybe you throw some seeds in the ground and check them a few weeks later because it's not an engineering project. That's what I do in the summer. I've had a few issues over the years but my successes outnumber my failures despite being a bit inattentive.
- jelliclesfarm 7y agoI might give this a shot to weed between my lavender field rows. I have 1.5 acres. Why not? Just use them on a couple of them to see how it operates.
- WheelsAtLarge 7y agoI'm surprised they haven't taken the time to create 2 equal gardens one with the robot one without it. If it works then this type of demonstration would be a great marketing win for the company. By not having a sample garden, it makes me dought the effectiveness of it since it such an easy thing to do.
- jamewatson 7y agoThat's really interesting! Roomba for the garden