On September 5th Horticulture Nova Scotia hosted their “Industry Demonstration Morning” where Nexus Robotics successfully demonstrated their autonomous weeding robot, R2-Weed2. R2-Weed2 navigates and removes weeds autonomously using cameras and a neural network to differentiate between weeds and crops. Their robot is specialized for removing weeds accurately without damaging crops.

R2-Weed2 is capable of removing weeds from many different crops at various stages of growth. Powered by two batteries, R2-Weed2 is capable of operating 24 hours per day. R2-Weed2 will be constantly collecting data about the crop and growing conditions. This information will allow the farmer to make more educated decisions about soil fertility and disease remediation. Superior records from the growing season will result in potential for improved growing conditions.

Nexus Robotics is currently working with the team at the Acadia Institute for Data Analytics with the goal of improving the performance of the computer vision system, which is critical to the weeding task.