Objectives

The working group invites weed scientists, agricultural engineers, computer scientist, manufactures and farmers to exchange ideas, results and carry out joint studies on precision weed management. That includes the spatial and temporal dynamics of weed populations in different crops, site-specific weed control, patch spraying, spot spraying and precise applications of physical weed control. We especially want to encourage young persons to become member of our working group.

The working group offers a platform to conduct joint studies on computer vision and automatic weed classification from digital images using Artificial Intelligence. It is intended to develop a joint data bank of correctly annotated weed images in all relevant growth stages for training different Neural Network classifiers.

The working group wants to share ideas on new precise chemical and physical weeding tools and test those tools in field trials. In addition to that, UAV-imaging is explored for detecting weed patches and individual weed plants and for creating georeferenced maps for patch and spot spraying.

The working group members meet regularly at different places during and in between the EWRS Conferences to discuss results and conduct joint activities. During the last meeting in 2024, the members conducted three joint field studies with six commercial weeding robots in sugar beet.