We started a discussion in a Signal group, but wanted to move it here for more involvement. The proposal on the table is to use own source hardware and software to hack together an autonomous weeding machine, maybe using AI to recognize weeds versus crop plants.
Using a hyperspectral camera (basically like IR spectroscopy, but done to each pixel in an image) to identify weeds and pests via their chemical makeup would be more expensive but probably more reliable than trying to get AI to identify them based on their visual appearance.