Laser “death ray” kills weeds 80x faster than humans | Hard Reset

This death ray kills weeds 80x faster than humans - with no chemicals.
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Every weed growing in a farm field takes away nutrients from the food humans are trying to grow and eat. Weeds are a significant pain for farmers: They are not only expensive to control but are also able to develop resistance to herbicides, meaning that farmers may resort to using more powerful chemicals on crops just to kill the unwanted, wild plants.
That’s why Carbon Robotics has developed an autonomous system that uses lasers to kill weeds, all without spraying potentially dangerous chemicals on crops or damaging the soil. The method can help farmers boost crop yield and make costs more predictable, not to mention resources saved on weed control.
The Seattle-based company proposes that its LaserWeeder system is just a first glimpse of how artificial intelligence will revolutionize agriculture.
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Read more of our stories on farming:
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3 ways autonomous farming is driving a new era of agriculture
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Agricultural photosynthesis lets us grow plants in total darkness
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[@kabeerkannu]

Try to spray, required nutrients, at the same time so that the operating cost of usage of machinery, might be reduced dramatically.

[@acquisitium]

maybe better a couple of seconds later?

[@Barskor1]

Spray nutriants....Mur Fermin! Big Chem garbage.

[@garypellett1355]

My ag profs always reminded us: We grow in soil. It’s not dirt. Dirt is what we sweep up with a broom.

[@DunnickFayuro]

I have a feeling that hyperspectral cameras would be better suited for this than computer vision and AI. Each plant species has a unique spectral signature that is way easier to read and doesn't require much AI training.

[@koiyujo1543]

I can agree

[@josef_fritzl]

Unimaginative, cash pressed startup devs will resort to AI bruteforcing 99% of the time, innovative and efficient solutions are not a thing anymore

[@paulraymond139]

You guys see your opinions, sitting back watching youtube videos, as superior to the guy who'se dedicated his carerer to this. The guy spending hundreds of hours testing nad retesting in field conditions. Rewriting code. Retesting. Hundreds of hours in challlenging , variable conditions. Nice.

[@josef_fritzl]

@@paulraymond139 it's not that the machine is bad, it's just that it could've probably been done with a lot less computer if he wanted to

[@DunnickFayuro]

@@paulraymond139 The only one saying we think our opinions are superiors is you. I've seen people achieving great results without AI using only hyperspectral cameras.

[@johnbash-on-ger]

What great advancement(s) in weed removal!

[@user-jc5hl3hd1c]

You don't want bare soil, it dries out and looses nutrients and good bacteria, and becomes dirt. Better to find a non-invasive ground cover that wont choke out the good plants we want, and can keep the soil healthy. However, with these you can program multiple crops at the same time, so you could co-grow complimentary crops that wont hurt each other and will better cover the soil.

[@RyanonBasss]

You're not a real person. This is a bot.

[@matiasgalilea5969]

This machine allows farmers to keep any beneficial plant they want on their fields, you can tell it not to shoot specific species. It depends on what the grower wants. In terms of soil health and microbiology- herbicides are enemy to those qualities since they degrade microbial activity which in turn affects the whole soil system and even degrades crop nutritional quality for consumption.

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

Partly true but weeds in the growing space of crops are 100 percent detrimental. In a perfect world you would have furrows with weeds and plants growing in them but regulations in California AG don’t allow that currently.

[@MrChelek]

Soil is exposed only at the beginning, once crops have grown, and they are designed that way, they cover the gaps! You don’t be worried!

[@Stroporez]

That can be solved by mulching.

[@JPEight]

Next up is using lasers to roast aphids right off the leaf... and I'm here for it.

[@DeathToMockingBirds]

I wished Permaculture principles, no till, and regenerative agriculture was more practiced. This machine is great at creating bare soils that will bake in the sun. Especially if it's to grow lettuce as in this video, which need so much water, it would be best to use aquaponics.

[@tomo1168]

exactly my thoughts. but still better, than spraying that same bare soil.

[@thebestlutz]

Maybe they are using lettuce as the example crop for the simple fact it is the easiest to train artificial intelligence on? Proof of concept. Then you produce a video like this to get the investors. I have had plenty of experience with my own aquaponic system to understand that it’s the perfect and most efficient way to produce lettuce. Either way, I think it’s awesome that this technology will clearly become a reality.

[@DunnickFayuro]

@@thebestlutz Then try to mass produce your lettuces and sell them for cheaper than his. Market is ready for cheaper healthy foods :)

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

What you are saying is the best solution but currently in California the laws regarding this eco hybrid ag are not very allowing

[@mishkabaloo1447]

@@ThePigGoesQuackwhy?

[@jack8831]

Great shots and I like the commenter's voice. I would have liked to see how the laser is redirected to the weeds, what happens when the plants we want are so big that cover weeds, how frequent you need to use the laser, costs of the machine

[@NickFromHardReset]

I can answer a couple of these questions - the lasers shoot their beam into a mirror that can swivel around to aim the laser pretty flexibly - and this lets them shoot the laser under leaves that might obstruct the beam. Also, they tend to run this through field while the plants are all really small, so there's not much obstruction to deal with. My understanding when we filmed with them was that they really only need to run this over the field once to clear out the weeds.

[@jack8831]

@@NickFromHardReset Are you part of the crew that filmed this video? Thank you for answering. So they needed to run the machine only once till the end of the harvesting process of that batch of plants?

[@NickFromHardReset]

@@jack8831 Yes! I'm the director/host of the show. I don't want to speak too generally about how many times they have to use this, because every crop and every farm is different. That said, when we asked the folks at this farm how many applications of this they used, they said just once. I believe they also have a hand crew that comes through later in the growing process, but they said that was more for just having humans to look through everything and make sure the crops were doing well.

[@KGchannel01]

This is so cool! I want this on all farms, and one for my yard! (I can't use the weed and feed that contaminates my ground water!)

[@ThisIsToolman]

This is great stuff but I wonder if it will be able to distinguish between the weed and the crop in the case where it needs to be continuously weeded?

[@isaakloewen5172]

It is a simple training process with machine learning.

[@bellofbelmont]

Thanks for the information. Well put together. Jim Bell (Australia)

[@tankerbill1431]

What is the projected cost of a unit?

[@GreenishlyGreen]

As a person who did the whole human weed killer thing, can confirm, it sucks, you still see weeds when you close your eyes 😭.

[@andrewreynolds912]

This is gonna be game-changing for everyone once it gets cheaper and more available farming can be cool like hydroponics and stiff but this is dope

[@annoyedok321]

Once it becomes effective. Too often people think technology is limited by price when it's actually limited by effectiveness.

[@andrewreynolds912]

@@annoyedok321 I'm aware of that

[@lightlinked]

A fiber laser would be perfect for this thing. Diode pumped fiber lasers are already displacing CO2 lasers in metal cutting and are more energy efficient and durable (no glass tube)

[@koiyujo1543]

yes that's very true but their more expensive than co2 lasers and plus co2 lasers still have uses but still are getting slowly phased out so I bet they will eventually move to fiber optics

[@alvydasjokubauskas2587]

Later particle accelerators will do the trick as plants will become more immune to light...

[@conradnelson5283]

@@alvydasjokubauskas2587. 🤣🤣

[@AlwaysCensored-xp1be]

New 2W IR diode lasers are available now. They can even engrave metal.

[@ErikLiberty]

That means that this farmer can now sell all of his crops as organic!

[@AccelerateYourSuccess]

You forgot about rodents. Farmers have to repel them too.

[@zapfanzapfan]

@@AccelerateYourSuccess Laser them too?

[@avanonvise]

Had no idea farming can be so cool!

[@nixtoshi]

farming is a high tech industry As far as I know

[@RubyRhu]

The ground in the video looks very flat. Does the laser weed killing robot work on hillsides?

[@talesofgore9424]

I need this in backpack form.

[@DrakRahi]

How much fuel per unit per day? How expensive is it to run?

[@fuferito]

01:41 Totally wasted chance by the narrator who didn't pick up on Dr Evil's classic _"freakin' _*_lazer beam"_* quote.

[@NickFromHardReset]

I want you to know we definitely discussed this - and you’re right that it’s a fantastic and appropriate pop culture reference. But … we didn’t think our fair use argument was strong enough to include it in the piece. 😢

[@edwardboylan4187]

I figure we need a lot more vertical farming...

[@oceanwonders]

I worry that there will be unintended consequences, but based just on this video, the concept is worth exploring. Is this just prototype stage or are there farms using this?

[@zile8869]

Maybe weeds will evolve to look more like normal crops so that the ai can't detect them...

[@oceanwonders]

@@zile8869 Interesting.

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

We and a few other companies are using this machine. We have 2 machines one up here and one in Yuma. It is very real and very exciting.

[@velimircuvrk1640]

And what is the price of this machine?

[@amalgeorge6877]

I wonder what the power requirements for this is. Sounds like all those high power lasers drink up a lotta juice.

[@savvysue3537]

O.k. Freethinkers, how to make one portable and simple enough for home gardeners' use?!! I have been in a quandary to kill-off non-native weeds that are taking over my back yard. The herbicides, while effect have serious side-effects for humans as well as wildlife. Can anyone tell me whether such a device is available (and affordable) on today's market? Thanks.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Looking forward to the future when I can go to the local garden center and ask "Phased plasma weeder, 40 watt range" 🙂

[@fyrerayne8882]

Can you use on thorns and thistles?

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

Any weed can be killed. The AI just has to be trained and it can do jt

[@rjdverbeek]

Is there a fire hazard?

[@pmcate2]

Is it killing it at the root? Just looks like it's burning some of the leaves.

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

It is burning the weed at the stem and we use it on weeds so small that this burning will sufficiently kill the weed

[@28704joe]

What about the roots ? does it kill the roots too? When I weed whack a weeds leaves I don't kill the root and it eventually grows back.

[@UGNAvalon]

Considering the size of the plants being lasered, I’d assume the roots are still too small to recover effectively.

[@hydrangeadragon]

Or you could just do symbiotic permaculture farming where different plant species keep weeds at bay, protect the soil from erosion and help each other thrive, just as nature intended, no zapping or pesticides needed

[@CUBETechie]

Exactly this would be the best thing

[@dankforest]

Not to troll or argue. Could we consider that large scale cultivation cant be considered possible with mixed fields. Although i do agree switching to reintriduce nutrients, money doesnt permit this. People complain about a 2 dollar head of lettuce. If its not perfect its trash also. So between all this how do you plant anything else? You will loose to much money. So farmers plant same crops year after year to try and make profits to stay afloat. All this is still being controlled by weather as well. We need more rain.... To many variables.

[@tankaaron3776]

All plants other than the cash crop are weeds. They steal water, nutrient and sunlight from the cash crop.

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

@@dankforestagreed and current ag laws here don’t allow this type of thing

[@alternbg]

you can scale this one for the food needs of 10B people without cutting jungles and ancient woods, affecting wild life, eh? :D Think again ..

[@anonanon2031]

Can this eliminate violence on earth too though if scaled up?

[@jeremycrochtiere6317]

Shorter pulse times will increase the power density enough to cause cascading ionization within the plant, this likely would also destroy rhizomes and roots.

[@ellendranauriel]

How does this company address the risk that the burning weeds might spark a fire?

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

It is highly improbable a fire would start considering that the weeds are so small when we use the machine. And the burning only lasts a couple milliseconds so there’s no real risk.

[@blairzettl3933]

Love this!

[@dietime18]

This entire episode sounds like a sales pitch

[@DyslexicEngineer]

Cool! Does the smoke of the plant pollution? It's a combustion, so there is probably co2 right?

[@frankfrank5821]

How to say your brainwashed without saying your brainwashed 😂

[@nixtoshi]

yes, but the amount of air pollution and CO2 released from this is probably too small to make a big difference

[@DrakRahi]

It's fertilizing the field with the CO2 that the crops so desperately need. Awesome!

[@davidpressley8272]

I’m interested in a hand held for my flower beds 😅

[@freethink]

We like the way you think.

[@ddelv1601]

You could probably accomplish the same with high pressure water jets. They would be very good a diarupting the weeds root system.

[@seeitwithchris1041]

I want one of those hats

[@vinodgoel8811]

Who has uploaded this video please

[@MusikCassette]

do we need any of this if we switch to hydroculture?

[@brenthass5876]

God bless the inventor of this and his team. May you grow rapidly

[@MrPieguyDaBoss]

Now I really want this but as a hand held gun with back pack so when someone ask what u spraying I would just say "Laser"

[@barebaric]

I wonder why you can't just push the weed back into the ground. I've seen some robot do that before. Seems like that could be a lot faster.

[@wayneyd2]

Laser “death ray”??? Is that what was used in Maui?

[@bryanalicea5270]

This presenter is great!!!!

[@Trebbell]

I love the idea and hate chemicals/GMO but this looks extremely expensive and power intensive. Its extremely slow, they did mention its 80x faster than human I believe, but what about a bio-degradable mulch? Sure they can come up through the hole where your crop is but hopefully it wont get enough sun to grow. I feel like that is a much more viable option for most farmers who are trying to avoid chemicals/GMO and intensive labor.

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

We own two machines including the one in the video and we’re expecting return on investment in about a year. And after that point it will be profiting more than a hand crew.

[@felipealbertopereiralemes4451]

@@ThePigGoesQuack The payback is just one year? WOW. How much ha/h do they?

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

@@felipealbertopereiralemes4451 We do about an acre an hour so about 0.4 ha/h. It runs about 10-12 hours currently but could really run for 24 hours straight

[@rizizum]

What's bad about GMO's? Literally every plant we eat is a GMO

[@thomasfulcher6681]

@@rizizum Lots of GMOs have been developed in order to be unaffected by herbicides. This means that they are getting sprayed by herbicides every day and the consumer will end up eating some herbicides with their GMO corn for example unless they wash it well (even then I'm not sure if the herbicide actually dissipates)

[@dimab1257]

Cloud of smoke if behind the tractor. What is the size of carbon footprint of these lasers and how much electricity they consume ?

[@frankfrank5821]

How to say your brainwashed without saying your brainwashed 😂

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

It’s definitely not a cloud of smoke. It’s barely any smoke to be honest. The lasers run off of the PTO generator on the front.

[@dimab1257]

@@ThePigGoesQuack if you burn something, smoke goes anyway. In our green 2020s it is not good for business

[@alandunlap4106]

Couldn't you just have a long propane burner that'd basically do the same thing?

[@Grateful.For.Everything]

Pretty cool!

[@shay5025]

I'm so excited for mass adoption of this technology!

[@StitchesLovesRats]

You have a faster one 8 months ago. Please explain. Never mind, other one doesn't use lasers.

[@e.v.k.3632]

Can i go under that Thing and laser my Eyes for cheap?

[@hameedkhan698]

How it gonna kill wee when plant leaves get bigger

[@Wistbacka]

And so, the first step in Skynet's arms race had begun. Starts as weed killers. Then it moves to the food chain....💀

[@zombieblaster5754]

this needs to be funded.

[@paladintrueknight]

Amazing potential for ecological restoration.

[@edwin5419]

I'd like to see weeds evolve to survive laser attacks

[@SamudraMishra-yp4gc]

Well, a good initiative but with challenges and drawbacks like- it will be useless when crops grow and become denser. Also the cost to run this will be higher and it's mass supply will take years.

[@Kzyon]

I think this is a good solution, it is always better than poisoning the soil and water with pesticides and herbicides. There are other ways of growing crops, using polycultures instead of monocultures, which reduces so-called weeds, pests etc.

[@CUBETechie]

Why not profit from the weeds too?

[@DavidCardamoneNinja]

Amazing this has to happen everywhere and herbicides need to be outlawed if it takes industrial espionage to do it then of course

[@TrevorStruthers]

So it takes 80 times longer to kill a human with this machine? Seems rather expensive.

[@jeremycrochtiere6317]

Many weeds are produced by rhizomes, and killing their surface growth won't fully erratic the weeds.

[@Joe4show]

Why doesn’t our tax money go towards this…

[@AlwaysCensored-xp1be]

Open source version should loqer costs

[@josephlongfellow1244]

wait, but how do you know how fast the laser kills humans? how many humans?

[@zapfanzapfan]

Hasta la vista to the weeds!

[@AccelerateYourSuccess]

We finally get to see what the man who belongs to that voice looks like.

[@luismiguel5391]

May I ask: why don't you just use some kind of mechanical system to get rid off the weed? Laser looks like overkilling.

[@Daniko2]

That's what we've been doing for thousands of years. Tilling, hoeing, hand removal = mechanical systems. I suppose you could put hoe and spade arms on a robot, but to me that sounds far more prone to breakdown (from dust, and general wear and tear), a whole lot more expensive to maintain, and much harder to build cheaply enough to replace herbicides.

[@luismiguel5391]

@@Daniko2 Do you think mechanical systems are more expensive than lasers?

[@paulpease8254]

They mentioned in the video. Burning with the laser doesn’t disturb the soil, so it prevents erosion.

[@Daniko2]

@@luismiguel5391 Initially, no. But the reason lasers are expensive is because they are still relatively new technology. There is still plenty of room for them to benefit from economies of scale (the more you make identical things, the cheaper each individual one is to make--up to a point). But the same is not true of mechanical devices like hoes, spades, and plows. They're already as cheap as they're likely to get. So if we haven't already incorporated them into weeding systems, it's far more likely to be because it's just not cheap enough to compete with herbicides and migrant labor. Also, it's always more expensive to maintain the moving parts of a machine. The fewer of them there are, the cheaper maintenance is.

[@luismiguel5391]

@@paulpease8254 Well designed mechanical systems doesn't disturb the soil either. That's just an excuse to sell the buzzwords. They use laser because is cool.

[@DrakRahi]

Could it be programmed to target slugs and grasshoppers?

[@Forscythe80]

Unless it's cheaper than chemicals, I don't see a lot of farmers using it. Will it be cost comparable to less green methods? I hope farmers can afford the upfront cost. Because it does look very promising for farmlands.

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

It’s about a year until we will make profits off the machine

[@howardb.6205]

We are one man and Earth

[@GreenAppelPie]

This has been out on the market for a couple of years. Now the need to zap bugs

[@hydrangeadragon]

bugs are an important part of the ecosystem, they don't need to be zapped, people need to farm holistically via permaculture and food forests where everything works together, no need for all this violence against nature

[@ewaf88]

Herbicides are dangerous - so this looks like a better solution.

[@pauliman1098]

LASERS > ROUNDUP

[@SuvayanGhosh-zm7wf]

Do this plant killing marijuana??

[@bensonboys6609]

So will evolutionary pressure create weeds invulnerable to laser fire? 🤷🏽‍♂️

[@TimLongson]

Fantastic and exciting technology, so long as it definitely 100% only kills weeds, as the chemicals currently used are doing huge damage to the environment, including people! Just make sure you power it with solar panels on top of the laser machines and/or solar panels and batteries at the farm - keep it 100% green with 100% renewable energy powered lasers.

[@DrakRahi]

Probably diesel powered. Solar can't power the machine at night.

[@MartinMenge]

Surely, methodology is the study of methods, not the methods themselves.

[@bakedbeings]

Next, a build that fires tasty gamma rays ☢️

[@Andrew-vs5tw]

maybe someday someone will program these robots to eliminate humans with hyper accurate lasers

[@paulsimons769]

Imagine the cost and maintenance of this machine 😂

[@hackladdy9886]

Imagine the cost and maintenance for the people, tools, & herbicides individually killing every single weed in that field instead 💀

[@ThePigGoesQuack]

It is not as much as you think. We run it 24 hours a day with little maintenance. The truth is there is not much to service on it!

[@martinostlund1879]

Takes care of weeds, what about insecst later on?

[@michaelrfx7]

You can put a mini “death ray” on a school of Drones, to eliminate weeds!

[@samuelgreen1200]

It's all fun and games until we create laser-resistant weeds

[@randallmarsh446]

it is better to coexist with the different varieties of plants in our world,they provide food for other life forms een thou we may not eat them. Those other life forms contribute to nitrogen fixing elements and food sources for wild life. i wouldnt want something like this to go out of control world wide the effects would spell disaster. In an outbreak of noxious weeds ect that have no known enimies mabey this would be a good tech to use on. .

[@hallucinati]

What more we could do? Solar powered towing vehicles that could pull the laser thingy without a DIESEL BURNING TRACTOR running that slow. I could see unnecessary fuel costs and certainly unnecessary environmental costs not being an issue. (As long as it's sunny. Otherwise a slow diesel-burning tractor at slow speeds would still be very beneficial.) 😶

[@koiyujo1543]

also the fact is this tech will get not only better but also be able to kill weeds while at higher speeds than the massive slow af crawl were seeing right now

[@lestagez]

yea only kills the weed on top of the soil, not the seed underneathe

[@ramakrishna5480]

Dude u just homelandered those weeds

[@pasapucha]

Tamarillo टमाटर in Nepali

[@JaXuun]

EU parlament: is it emission neutral? No?! BAN IT !

[@DougGrinbergs]

9:34 yes, we should stop destroying topsoil - important lesson from Great Depression Dust Bowl. Unclear how often this has to be used. How long before we're killing weeds with laser drones instead?

[@cedriceric9730]

I like how you think

[@conradnelson5283]

I used a small steam cleaner in my garden. Slow but chemical free!

[@michaelpratt1072]

This isnt the only laser weeder (for one). Also, having the server built into the machine is very outdated technologically. As other aspects of this are (others mentioned camera tech and laser tech, which I am not sure about but based on literally having a server inside one of these things, is likely true). Super cool, but definitely outdated.

[@daviddmitriev396]

would you elaborate on it please?

[@Bruyerholz]

Do we get laser resistant weeds in the future? Exciting times to ne alive 😂

[@cedriceric9730]

They will build star fighters and fight back or unlock defensive laser turret genes😂

[@Ninjaeule97]

Great, now the weeds will evolve to fool robots (and humans). 😅

[@SF-fb6lv]

Y'all just going to make a bunch of 'high-power laser-resistant weeds' - then it won't be such a cool idea any more, will it? On a more serious note: I planted one of those 'flower mix' seed mixtures in part of my yard, and (since I can't tell 'emerging flower' from 'emerging WEED'), I used the iPhone plant identifier app 'PictureThis' to identify what to pull and what to leave growing. Unfortunately so far, they were all weeds...

[@SoloRenegade]

way too slow for most crops/fields

[@jeremycrochtiere6317]

Massive monoculture farming is just as dangerous to the top soil, nature doesn't operate like this, multiple species are often inter-related and have mutualistic relationships between them.