The various partners of this project which will run until April 2024 are researching a technical system solution for chemical-free sugarbeet cultivation. The increasing restriction of herbicide availability and the emergence of resistance require alternative solutions. Sophisticated image acquisition and intelligent data processing help to detect and distinguish between the crop and the weed. This data is used to control a laser that destroys the weeds in a targeted manner.
The start-up Escarda, founded in 2019 out of the University of Bonn, takes over the part of image acquisition and processing. The system has to reliably distinguish between plants and weeds in a matter of seconds as the robot moves across the field.