From one of the creators of the Roomba comes the Roomba for your garden, a robot called Tetrill (pronounced "turtle").

Solar-powered with no chemicals, the two-and-a-half pound Tetrill is a little chopping machine that recognizes weeds through their height. It uses sensors to find its away around like a simplified Roomba. According to the machine's Kickstarter campaign page, it uses a simple metric to differentiate in the green: "weeds are short, plants are tall." Using a spinning string trimmer, it cuts short weeds every day until the weeds lose all their energy and die out.

If your plants are just growing, then Franklin Robotics, creators of the Tetrill, provide users with protective metal collars to around the plants. The Tetrill feels the collar and moves away. The Tetrill also needs to be boxed in somehow, be it with a wooden barrier or fence, to keep it from wandering away. The Tetrill is built for an area of around 100 square feet, which its makers have determined to be the standard size of most American gardens.

The company hopes to add more features as Tetrills get funded, including motion-sensor activated movements to react to various tiny critters that can be found in gardens. Still in the early stages, a pledge of $225 will put you on the list for one if you make it in time for the Early Bird deal. As usual, heed our Kickstarter wariness—who knows if this will come out on time, or be any good if it does. But Tetrill seems to have a solid team behind it. Shipments are supposed to happen during spring 2018, just in time for a new planting season.

Source: Kickstarter via The Verge

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