Andrew James (from left), Neil Morrison, Natalia Kurz and Michael Neiss work on a prototype of their weed-killing robot ahead of The Farm Robotics Challenge, which they won on May 21.
By Holly Hartigan
A team of Cornell undergraduates beat 95 other teams to take the grand prize at The Farm Robotics Challenge with their invention: an autonomous robot that kills weeds with electricity.
Their robot can travel through a vineyard or orchard without a human operator, zapping weeds with a small amount of electricity, saving labor and energy and preventing crop loss, without the use of herbicides.
Led by Andrew James, an agricultural sciences major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), the team of agricultural specialists and engineers studied the existing electrical weeding technology, developed their own low-energy system and built a working prototype over the course of four intense months.
