Autonomous robotic weed control systems: A review

Autonomous robotic weed control systems hold promise toward the automation of one of agriculture's few remaining unmechanized and drudging tasks, hand weed control. Robotic technology may also provide a means of reducing agriculture's current dependency on herbicides, improving its sustainability and reducing its environmental impact. This review describes the current status of the four core technologies (guidance, detection and identification, precision in-row weed control, and mapping) required for the successful development of a general-purpose robotic system for weed control. Of the four, detection and identification of weeds under the wide range of conditions common to agricultural fields remains the greatest challenge. A few complete robotic weed control systems have demonstrated the potential of the technology in the field. Additional research and development is needed to fully realize this potential. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.