Sprayer that detects weeds

Projects General Guidance
1

I would like to create a system that detects weeds, then opens a solenoid valve that sprays the weed. Wondering what sensor you guys would go with to detect the weed?

2

Try this:
https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/42763/PDF

3
  1. Camera, powerful PC, machine learning (maybe TensorFlow) and lots of work.
  2. DNA technology with rapid sequencing or PCR/fragment matching analysis.
4

One man's weed is the other man's crop... Or maybe the crop is weed, even.

5

carkah:
I would like to create a system that detects weeds,

What species of weed and what is the species of the plants you don't want to destroy?

...R

6

Here's an XKCD for this: xkcd: Tasks

7

wildbill:
Here's an XKCD for this: xkcd: Tasks

That one is easy: make the photo part of Google's image captcha thing, and let unsuspecting users figure it out for you!

8

carkah:
I would like to create a system that detects weeds, then opens a solenoid valve that sprays the weed. Wondering what sensor you guys would go with to detect the weed?

First off, WELCOME to the wonderful world microcontrollers and the Arduino
one of the things you will learn is that an micro-controller is only a simple computer that can do many things.
You will also learn that micro-controllers need to use sensors to get data. Some of these are for temperature, or moisture, or distance, or movement, etc.

You can buy a simple micro-controller for $1, but, you can also spend well over $1,000 to get a sensor that does a very-very accurate sensing of a thing.

In your project, as I understand, NASA and other countries have developed satellite sensing that can image the Earth and based on radiated light, can determine what sort of plants are growing.

If you can develop similar technology but be able to mount that on a mobile device, you could get close to your wish.

As far as we know, no one has done it yet. The first leaves of many plants are distinguishable from most other plants, it is the second set that starts to help define what the plant is.

For a farmer, it would be a matter of mathematics to plant a plant every 6.0000 inches and in a straight row with a deviation from center of 0.1 inches.

Then, assume that any growth outside of that exact spot is a weed, to remove anything not 6.000 inches apart and within 0.1 inches from center line.

For identifying a plant species in the early stages, based on the look of the leaves, we do not have that technology yet.

9

Since most crops are monocultures, it would be much easier to detect a non-weed, the plant not to spray.

Paul