LaserWeeder
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Herbicides can be very effective, but also come with some challenges like cost, resistance, and restrictions, especially in heavily regulated states like California. Founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics, Paul Mikesell says that’s why they’ve commercialized an alternative product for weed management – a laser weeder implement.
Mikesell... "The whole point of the laser is that it's an efficient way of converting energy to light. It's an efficient way to do this and that's why you see lasers used all over the place in metal cutting, like I said, and like skin care and all this other stuff. It's a well-understood process. And the good thing about it is that it's so finely targeted, which means what you get is a nice tight beam that allows us to direct all of that energy onto the specific point we're trying to hit. So instead of just blasting out like these light bulbs above me that makes this ambient light, a laser specifically targets all that energy in one direction. That's how you get the beam. That's why it's called a beam or a laser beam. So what we do is we target that beam onto the meristem of the weed, the undifferentiated growth cells in a plant. It's called the meristematic cells. So we target onto the meristem where those cells are and explode all the cell walls and then the plant dies. So the laser gives you high energy, intensely focused on a thin beam that you can target."
Mikesell says laser weeding reduces farming costs, increases crop yield, and improves soil health all while eliminating hand labor.
