Weeds are the worst nightmare for any gardener striving to maintain a pristine lawn. The Boston-based startup Dandy Technology says its lawn-bots can take care of the problem automatically by crawling over your lawn, identifying the invaders, and spraying them with a small amount of herbicide.
The Dandy DT-01 ($700, suitable for lawns up to 1/4 of an acre) and the larger Dandy DT-01XL ($800, for lawns up to a full acre) are app-controlled wheeled robots with onboard sensors, artificial intelligence, and visual processing to eliminate weeds via targeted spot treatments. Users draw lawn boundaries in the Dandy app (available for Android and iOS) and the bots use GPS to navigate the yard without depending on buried wires the way that some lawn-mowing robots do. When the Dandy finishes its job, it automatically returns to its home base until it’s needed again.
Dandy Technology says these smart appliances can discern broadleaf weeds from grass with better than 95 percent accuracy, and it promises the autonomous gadget will eliminate every weed in your lawn after one or two sessions. What’s more, this system will dispense 90 percent less herbicide compared to spraying an entire lawn with a targeted product. The Dandy DT-01 is equipped with a 0.5-liter herbicide reservoir, while the model DT-01XL features as 1.2L reservoir.
The consumer versions of the Dandy weed-killing robot are expected to ship in the spring. The manufacturer is also working on a commercial version, the Dandy DTC-101, which should be available by the middle of the year.
Author: Ed Oswald, Freelance contributor
Ed is a technology journalist, music nut, and gadget geek who hails from the somewhat small town of Reading, Pennsylvania.