franklin robotics tertill is a robot that weeds your garden

entrepreneur joe jones – inventor of the ‘roomba’ robotic vacuum cleaner – is now developing a little robot called ‘tertill’ to whack garden weeds. the innovative gardening tool is solar-powered and weatherproof, so you can leave to its own devices without the worry of it ever losing charge, or being damaged by rainfall. just like its counterpart for cleaning the home, it makes use of ‘proprietary algorithms’ as it inspects the soil autonomously.

all images © franklin robotics

franklin robotics’ ‘tertill’ features capacitive sensors inside its front bumper, detecting when to reverse and turn around when it encounters tall, mature plants, and other garden obstacles. they also stop it from leaving the garden, as long as it is surrounded by a border. additional sensors beneath the little robot detect can weed seedlings that are short enough to pass under its bumper. it then stops and activates its bottom-mounted string trimmer ‘weed-whacker’, chopping the seedling down. no need to worry if you are growing rare species of flowers, people can protect them using plastic collars provided by the massachusettes-based company.