CASSELTON, N.D. — There were sugarbeets planted near Casselton, North Dakota, in July, weeks after normal planting would be complete.
The reason? The developers of an autonomous weeding robot need to gather images of sugarbeets at all different growth stages to teach the machine what is a sugarbeet and what is not. So in July, it was gathering images of sugarbeets just emerging and at other stages of growth.
Kenny Lee along with Rich Wurden, who has family roots in Minnesota, in 2020 founded Aigen, the company that is developing a fleet of small four-wheeled robots that use mechanical arms to reach out and uproot or cut weeds.
“So we're really thinking and designing for a fleet or swarm of robots that's going to be out on a farmer's land and continuously take action against the weeds,” Lee said. “So it's not meant to replace the tractor and the cultivation methods; what it really is designed to be is a sidekick to all of the other farming equipment that's out there.”
The company is not selling the robot to farmers, but instead is signing up farmers to have Aigen bring a swarm of robots to a farm to do their work.
ADVERTISEMENT
Lee said that insulates farmers from having to deal with technical or mechanical issues with the robots and lets them go about their business.
The company aims to deploy 100 of the solar-power robots in 2024 and 500 in 2025, and Lee said Aigen’s services are already sold out for those two growing seasons.
But first the robots need to learn what is a sugarbeet, with everything else assumed to be something that should be weeded out.
“In order to pull that off, what you have to do is collect thousands and thousands and thousands of images from real conditions and also get them labeled, which means someone needs to go and say ‘alright, this is a sugarbeet and this is a weed,’ and you do that. You do that enough times, then the computer will take over and begin to have pattern recognition and understand that, you know, this is a crop, this is a weed .”
And when it spots an unwanted plant, the mechanics takes over.
"We're using mechanical weeding techniques, essentially two little hoes or shovels that are on the end of the arms of the robot,” Lee said. “And so once a robot sees the weed that it wants to remove, that translates into an arm movement, that swings over and and flicks out of the ground. And so either it cuts off the leaves from the weed or it uproots it, and then we'd let nature, the sun, take care of the rest.”
He said it would work best when the beets and plants are small.
“That's exactly the time when we want to be out there on the field to weed,” Lee said. “It's just a matter of training the robot to be able to differentiate between the small sugarbeet versus a small weed.”
ADVERTISEMENT
The company is based in Kirkland, Washington, but currently has about 75% of its engineering team in Fargo. The first robots are being made in Washington state, but Lee said the company plans to eventually move production to Fargo.
Aigen is partnering with KWS, the company behind Betaseed, which dominates the sugarbeet seed market in the Red River Valley, and with North Dakota State University, which has its agronomy seed farm near Casselton.
Tom Peters is a specialist in weed control in sugarbeets, working for both NDSU and University of Minnesota. He has provided some of the test plots to feed the image library Aigen needs.
“I am an ardent supporter. And the reason is, is because I think we need those kinds of technologies to provide us with weed management options for the future,” Peters said.
He said the challenge will be to develop a product that can scale up.
“We're not talking about a garden anymore,” Peters said. “We're talking about an 80-acre field for a grower that has 1,000 acres of sugarbeets. So how we ramp that up for commercial fields is going to be really the time challenge that's left for these companies.”
With herbicide resistance always a possibility, developing new technologies is must, he said.
“I have to be involved because weed management has always been an integrated program that combines chemical weed control practices with other practices like machinery or agricultural practices like crop rotations or row spacing or crop density. So it's it's just another tool in the tool box.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Lee said Aigen hopes to take the robot beyond just weed control.
When talking automation with farmers, he said several questions come up.
“Can you measure soil temp? ... Can you measure moisture, nutrients, crop stress, insect infestations? The robot will have the ability to do all of that,” Lee said. “We passionately believe that weed control is the right strategy because that is the burning problem for all the farmers, but we're very excited to explore, in partnership with the growers, what's next? What are the other things that we can do together?”
The Trust Project
