The ROMI Rover
The ROMI Rover is a farming tool that assists vegetable farmers in maintaining vegetable beds free of weeds. It does this by regularly hoeing the surface of the soil and thus preventing small weeds from taking root. A weekly passage of the robot should be sufficient to keep the population of weeds under control.
The ROMI Rover can perform the weeding task mostly autonomously and requires only minor changes to the organization of the farm. It is designed for vegetable beds between 70 cm and 120 cm wide (not including the passage ways) and for crops up to 50 cm high.
It currently handles two types of crops, lettuce and carrots. The lettuce can be planted out in any layout, most likely in a quincunx pattern. In this configuration the rover uses a precision rotary hoe to clean the soil both between the rows and the plants. This process is slower than classical mechanical weeding. The rover can cover up to 600 m²/day.
For carrots, the rover uses classical mechanical tools, such as stirrup hoe, to regularly clean the soil in between the rows. In this configuration, the carrots should be sown in line. In this classic configuration, the rover can cover a surface of 7200 m²/day.
In addition to weeding, the embedded camera can be used to collect images of the vegetable beds. This images can be used by the Farmer's Dashboard.