
Tertill Weeding Robot - akeck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwTWhMbnq9g
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jelliclesfarm
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oWl6FD-7c](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h8oWl6FD-7c)
: there are many mechanical weeding robots for field cultivation. France’s
Naio Technologies is my favourite. They are coming to North America soon.

It seems like Europe is far ahead of us with robotics and field automation. In
America, we have always had abundant cheap labour.

Also, American Agtech is a data play and geared towards commodity crops.
That’s not always suitable for food crops and speciality food crops and fruits
etc.

Edited to add: I guess tertill is for gardens. It’s not bad but can be better.

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KingFelix
What is up with that video? A few seconds in it looks like warp is fixing the
shaky/moved camera? Cool robot though!

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techer
Not sure but my google photos stabilisation has this effect...

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pajtai
This won't work! The hardest place to weed is in the grass and around
strawberries.... both of these can be just as short as weeds, and from the
"how it works" page, it looks like it is using height of plant to determine if
it's a weed.

Got me excited for a second.

[https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/](https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/)
"Tertill has a very simple method. Weeds are short, plants are tall."

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fenwick67
Yes, it only works for tall plants like tomatoes, raspberries etc., but that
doesn't mean it "won't work".

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pajtai
I guess I meant, it "won't work" for me personally... and using height as an
indicator of weediness seems risky.... at some point you'll have a tiny new
seedling that you want to keep and you'll have to remember to work around your
weeder... just doesn't seem as convenient as I would imagine it in my ideal
world.

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pavel_lishin
> _at some point you 'll have a tiny new seedling that you want to keep and
> you'll have to remember to work around your weeder._

There's a metal guard you put down around small plants that prevents Tertill
from mowing them down. The video does a pretty good job explaining the basic
operation.

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larrydag
Or just put chicken wire around areas you don't want weeded

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mikepurvis
Discussion from 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14715110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14715110)

I maintain my position at the time: weeding is almost never just weeding.
You're there monitoring a lot of different aspects of your plants' health and
progress; you need to do that whether you're weeding or not, so you might as
well be weeding.

This is a solution in search of a problem, and none of these people seem like
gardeners.

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bjornlouser
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwTWhMbnq9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwTWhMbnq9g)

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ThePadawan
The video calls "the typical garden size in the US" 100 sq ft (or 9 m^2). I
find it hard to wrap my head around that number. If I had 9m^2 of green, I
would never call that a garden.

Surely this is the average, but not the mean? As lots of apartments won't have
gardens at all.

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TFortunato
I think maybe they are using the word "garden" in the US sense of "part of
your land sectioned off to grow vegetables, fruits, etc.", not "the green
space in your land surrounding the home" which we'd refer to as the lawn.

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Animats
Oh, you have to put markers around non-weeds. It's not like the John
Deere/Blue River weeding machine.[1] Or the Ecorobotics weeding robot. Those
use machine learning to recognize weeds visually.

[1] [http://www.bluerivertechnology.com/](http://www.bluerivertechnology.com/)
[2] [https://www.ecorobotix.com/](https://www.ecorobotix.com/)

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Nextgrid
I'd choose a proven, 100% reliable criteria such as markers rather than fuzzy
methods like machine learning which evolve and can break/behave inexpectedly
over time.

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jpm_sd
It's really cute, but it looks sort of fragile and underpowered.

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markdown
Yup, reminds me of those cheap solar toys you can buy on Aliexpress.

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mattferderer
I'm curious if others who garden have really bad weed problems that can't be
solved with mulch & putting stuff down between rows?

I find cardboard or brown packaging paper between rows, & layering the whole
garden with grass & straw reduces all but a few random weeds.

I don't understand the value of weeding robots outside large agriculture.

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jedberg
That method only works for about one season, and then you have to redo it all.
I guess if you like gardening redoing the cardboard isn't so bad, but I'd
rather focus on the plants and not the cardboard.

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mdellavo
you have to redo the garden every season anyway

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jefflombardjr
I don't redo everything every season! I like to garden smart, not hard. Check
out permaculture.

Last year, I put down cardboard and mulched - planting strawberries directly
in the mulch and piercing through the cardboard. Fast forward a year, now that
the cardboard is pretty composted, the strawberries were established last year
had root systems in place, broke through the cardboard, and beat most of the
weeds. The weeds can't thrive because the strawberries are taking up all the
sun.

~~~
mattferderer
Sounds like you have a similar effective way for handling weeds. My main point
was that I don't think most gardeners have an issue with weeds in their
garden.

Side note, using large pieces of cardboard or packaging paper goes fairly
quick. I wouldn't consider it hard or time consuming.

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halis
Why buy this when I have kids?

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TheCraiggers
This thing is cheaper and doesn't talk.

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EADGBE
> Tertill uses bluetooth to talk to your smartphone.

Close, but not quite. Just wait for the 20 "I'm stuck" notifications.

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24gttghh
Or not weed at all and change how we think gardens should be planted in the
first place.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-
till_farming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming)

[https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/permaculture-
gardeni...](https://www.permaculture.co.uk/articles/permaculture-gardening-
creating-our-own-eco-systems)

The robot seems practical enough though. At least it has solar panels built
in!

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icebraining
Cutting the weeds doesn't seem anything like tilling; in fact, cutting them
and leaving the rest there as mulch seems fairly close to no-till.

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24gttghh
The little robot still drives around and compacts the soil a little. I'm not
saying it's not progress, but is it actually necessary?

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WheelsAtLarge
I'm surprised they haven't taken the time to create 2 equal gardens one with
the robot one without it. If it works then this type of demonstration would be
a great marketing win for the company.

By not having a sample garden, it makes me dought the effectiveness of it
since it such an easy thing to do.

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jcoffland
The website really needs a video demonstrating the product.

Edit: there is a video but it only show up on the desktop version.

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neogodless
[https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/](https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/)

The "hero" image/banner is a simple video demonstrating the "robot vacuum"
behavior, in a garden.

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jcoffland
It doesn't show up on mobile.

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KingFelix
Try this [https://www.tertill.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/02/tertill-i...](https://www.tertill.com/wp-
content/uploads/2019/02/tertill-intro.mov)

I have used the Divi theme a bunch and I think if you watch the actual link
where the video is you should be able to check it out.

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amadeusw
Am I wrong thinking that after a few weeks of cutting the leaves, the root
will become gigantic and will keep producing leaves at a faster rate? The only
way to get rid of dandelions is to pull the ever growing root from the ground.

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twic
_How does it remove them? Won’t the weeds just grow back?_

 _Tertill whacks weeds using a spinning string trimmer, which cuts the weed
off near the ground. Because Tertill lives in your garden and goes looking for
weeds every day, weeds are always small when the robot finds them. A whacked
weed may sprout again, but sprouting takes energy stored in the seed or root.
By coming back every day, Tertill never lets a weed develop the leaves it
needs to replenish this energy, so eventually the weed gives up and dies._

[https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/](https://www.tertill.com/how-it-works/)

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TremendousJudge
they managed to invent something even more stubborn than garden weeds

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rmason
So you will end up with a bunch of weeds inside your collar. Someone hasn't
thought this through. I've walked a lot of fields over a twenty year period,
weeds aren't always in the middle of the rows.

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noobiemcfoob
So...you pick the weeds out of the collar? You've reduced the land you have to
maintain to just that which this robot can't get to.

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dajonker
TLDR; you are supposed to get rid of all weeds in your garden first, then this
little robot will take care of all new weeds growing out of the ground. It's
supposed to be pretty much maintenance free and runs on only sunlight.

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pugworthy
I can imagine that when this rolls over a green hose, it promptly tries to
"kill" the hose.

And I don't want to think about what it does to slugs and snails...

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jelliclesfarm
I might give this a shot to weed between my lavender field rows. I have 1.5
acres. Why not? Just use them on a couple of them to see how it operates.

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tantalor
How well does this do on slopes?

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neogodless
From the product web site:

Will Tertill get stuck?

Tertill uses four-wheel-drive. This helps Tertill move through soft soil,
sand, and mulch, and also helps Tertill climb slopes. Its distinctive diagonal
wheels make Tertill more stable on slopes and help it get past certain terrain
challenges. Tertill relies on several sensors and clever programming to keep
out of trouble. To detect objects like the garden fence and big plants,
Tertill uses sensors similar to those found in many smart phones—the lightest
touch is all it takes. To detect steep slopes, Tertill uses the same sort of
sensor that tells your cell phone which way is up. Tertill can also sense if a
motor stops turning—perhaps jammed by a rock—so it can protect itself from
damage.

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bluedino
You'd think it woudl use tank tracks

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cr0sh
Tank tracks have problems at a small scale that aren't immediately apparent at
full scale.

The big one - especially for something "in the dirt" \- is dirt/mud getting
between the tracks and ground wheels/idlers. This can easily stop the drive
system, requiring user maintenance. Then there's the issue with water rusting
parts (shafts, screws, etc). Also, more moving parts equal more things to
break. Finally, on a small scale, tracks have a tendency to be easily "thrown"
from the wheels depending on how turning is accomplished and the terrain.

On a full sized tank or bulldozer, tracks still have these issues, but in the
case of dirt, it can just power through the obstacles; dirt and mud may build
up, and cause some rust, but the important bits are kept constantly
lubricated. Any parts that do grind up the dirt just wear down instead of
stopping (and eventually need replacement - very $$$$ replacement). If anyone
cares to, hosing off the tracks with a water truck can also be done, but isn't
likely to be done. Again, it all comes down to maintenance.

Also, full scale tracked vehicles rarely turn "en point", because their tracks
can be thrown just as easily as on the smaller scale, but cause more damage
and more repair $$$ needed to fix/replace (plus doing it in the field isn't
easy, either). The proper way to turn such a vehicle is to not perform such
maneuvers, or if you have to, make sure you're on relatively flat and soft
ground (that you don't mind utterly destroying - beware your wife's rose
garden), and do it fairly slowly. The side load on the tracks and idlers will
still be just as high, but throwing the track isn't as great. Usually, though,
you steer in a curve just like a car, except using differential speeds on each
track. There will still be side loads and "skidding", but the loads are much,
much less (also, this is why such machines, whether tracked or wheeled, are
known as "skid steered" or "differential steering").

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turk73
The whole thing is a "nice try" but spending money on something like this
isn't green--we're supposed to be consuming less overall and this hunk of
plastic will break within six months and then sit on a shelf until it
inevitably enters the waste stream as difficult to recycle e-trash.

When are people going to wake up and figure out that all this speculative
entrepreneurial-ism is pretty much just money making scams that exist as the
cost of the environment?

Don't want weeds? Be a gardener. Or don't be a gardener: This whole dilettante
Instagram gardener bullshit is what needs to die.

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tmaly
I enjoy working out in the garden. It is time to reflect and get off the
screen.

I don't think I would buy something like this.

