b'A New Way to WeedAn agricultural robot developed in Nova Scotia offers a unique solution to an age-old problem.BY: MARK HALSALLITS NAME MAY BE a playful pun, but the R2mine for three years. In that time, I got to experienceintelligence and a cutting-edge machine vision Weed2 agricultural robot is no joke when ithow much of a challenge weeding was and see justsystem that enables it to autonomously navigate comes to plucking problem weeds. how much labour is required on farms, Greenan says. farmers fields and precisely target weeds without So says Teric Greenan, a Nova Scotia vegetableI had quite a few friends studying engineer- harming crops. grower turned high-tech entrepreneur who cameing at the time, so I approached them about theGreenan says a camera mounted on the front of up with the idea for the innovative robotic weeder,potential of building a robot and thats how [the R2the R2 Weed2 platform informs the system which which could someday be used in commercial potatoWeed2] came to be. plants are weeds. Those weeds are then pulled out production. In 2017, Greenan founded Nexus Robotics inwith the weeders robotic arm and gripper. Theres In 2015, I started a mixed vegetable farm inDartmouth, N.S., for the purpose of developing andalso a camera attached to the robotic arm for Lunenberg County, N.S., which I ran with a friend ofcommercializing the robot, which utilizes artificialincreased precision, he adds.The R2 Weed2 robotic weeder. 28 SPUDSMART.COM WINTER 2020'