No matter how green fingered you are, no gardener enjoys the tedious (and never-ending) battle against weeds.
Not to mention the back pain following a weekend spent crouched next to an overgrown flowerbed.
But now a robot, Tertill, is here to “make gardening fun” again, according to creator Joe Jones, who was inspired to create the technology with Franklin Robotics, after a failed attempt at growing his own vegetable allotment.
Jones wrote in a blog on the site: “Nothing could have inspired or prepared me more for designing a robot to assist gardeners than attempting - and struggling - to maintain my own garden.”
Tertill autonomously navigates your garden, patrolling for troublesome plants; sensors and proprietary algorithms cause it to turn away from plants, get out of trouble when it meets an obstacle, and find as many weeds as possible.
And while your manual technique probably relies on pulling weeds out by the roots, the bot works by hacking down weeds with a string trimmer blade (think Robot Wars), repeatedly cutting them down until they wither and die.
Oh and don’t worry about your seedlings, they’ll be perfectly safe according to the team.
As Tertill is solar powered, you don’t need to constantly charge it – helpful if you are going away on holiday - as well as being eco-friendly, because it doesn’t require you to use chemical pesticides to treat the problem.
And it’s no fair-weather worker either, as it is fully waterproof you don’t need to monitor the rain clouds or bring it inside if you’re away for longer periods.
Jones said: “I learned my lesson. Weeds can never be ignored. When the weather is right for your crops to grow, weeds will grow too - and usually faster.”
The team are currently seeking funding for the technology with a Kickstarter campaign.