At Agritechnica-2019, Berthoud intrigued numerous stand visitors with its revolutionary new arrival: the SPOT SPRAYING intelligent spot-spraying system
Berthoud created its main premiere together with leading IT companies Bilberry and Carbon Bee AgTech – an intelligent spot-spraying system that saves 50 to 90% of herbicides. In its segment, it represents a new generation of weed-elimination solutions. So, while previous systems could tell a weed apart against the soil background, this product finds weeds within a mass of cultivated plants. This became possible thanks to using artificial-intelligence technology with machine-learning elements.
They expanded the parameters by which the system analyzes objects in frame (in particular, color and shape), and also enabled it to process complex images, for example, under conditions of dynamic shadows, part of a plant appearing in frame, and so on. An integral part of this was a large database of weeds and cultivated plants – objects with a group of specific characteristics – which is constantly updated. The program uses this database to analyze the current image. That image, incidentally, is transmitted from cameras mounted on the boom (up to 48 m) every 3 m.
The technology’s “brains” are connected to the sprayer’s onboard computer. As soon as a weed is detected, the system activates the nozzle, or several, above it, simultaneously building a map of weed distribution. All of this works even at speeds of up to 25 km/h. The current version of the Berthoud-Bilberry-Carbon Bee AgTech system has been “road-tested” over 30,000 ha and is now installed on three sprayers: one in France and two – in Bulgaria. This solution is expected to become available in Ukraine very soon. Meanwhile, active work continues: developers now face a harder task – spot application of fungicides.
Denys Mushtyn,
Tel.: (095) 274 94 92
Email: d.mushtyn@astra-group.com.ua
