Bright key facts / Deployed
Lasers matched the herbicides.
A machine drives a vegetable field, photographs every plant, decides which are weeds, and burns them with short laser pulses. In 2024 field trials in New Jersey and New York, it controlled weeds as well as or better than the standard herbicide programme.
- AI’s role
- Cameras under a light shroud photograph the bed; a deep-learning model classifies each plant as crop or weed, then by type and by growth stage — small, medium or large — and sets the laser's dwell time accordingly. It aims at the meristem, the growing point. The published trial records targeting precision within 1 mm of it. The camera, processor, laser and wavelength specifications are proprietary per the manufacturer, so no independent party can state which chips do the inference.
- Documented result
- In peer-reviewed trials across peas, spinach and beets at sites in New Jersey and New York, with two to three passes about ten days apart, laser weeding cut weed cover by at least 45% and weed density by at least 66%, leaving at least 97% less weed biomass by season's end. Crop stunting stayed under 1% and crop biomass rose by at least 30%. On two Californian farms audited by Western Growers, hand-weeding cost fell from $900.00 an acre to $282.28, with the machine adding $267.72 — a combined $550.00 and a net saving of about 39%.
- Important limitation
- The peer-reviewed trial used an autonomous demonstration unit, not a machine a farm can buy, and collected no economic data. Its authors thank Carbon Robotics for donating the unit, though the study was publicly funded and declares no conflicts.