Dino – a new robot and precision weed controller – from French compant, Naïo Technologies, has been given an innovation award from the Agritechnica Show committee.

It aims to counter the biggest challenge in mechanical weed control, which is the removal of weeds within the crop rows without time-consuming labour-intensive processes.

The Dino robot is the first autonomous machine for mechanical weed control in lettuce rows and locates the lettuce and activates two electric knives that cut the weeds in the space between two lettuce heads. The controller also produces a digital map that is then used for harvesting.

This technology reduces the cost of manual weed control and is a low-weight option to tractor-mounted weed controllers, thus reducing compaction and ensuring extended reliability. The Dino is also being adapted to produce robotic weed control in a number of other row-crop types of produce.