TerraClear Brings Tech to Rock Picking

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Every year rocks arise in farm fields for a variety of reasons. These rocks need to be removed to grow the crop. This monotonous task of locating the rocks as well as the laborious task of removing them by hand might make it a candidate for automation.

Thompson… “They break machinery, they slow precision farming, and they just take up time that increasingly, farmers don't have to spare.”

That’s Trevor Thompson, president of TerraClear which has a new product to map rocks in a field and autonomously pick up those rocks.

Thompson… “So we right now fly with a drone to map the entire field and give you the size and location of the rocks. And so on a very large acreage field, you can really quickly identify which rocks you're concerned with and go straight to them. And then there's the picker, which is driving towards full automation at some point, but we're really taking an iterative approach. And right now it's a tool that mounts on a compact track loader or skid-steer or front end load. And it has an opposing track system. And so they're just picking the rock itself. So it's really a precision application. It allows you to pick buried rocks. It allows you to pick very quickly, and it allows you to pick in a much wider range of fields conditions, including a seeded field.”

Learn more at TerraClear.com.