Lowell Company Creates Weed Killing Robot

BOSTON (CBS) - There are more than 40 million backyard gardens in the United States and every one of them contains weeds. WBZ business reporter Jeff Brown spoke to the CEO of one local company whose mission is to put an end to weeds.

Every time you think you get all the weeds out of your garden, the next day another one pops up.

Franklin Robotics of Lowell has a solution.

"So what we're looking at is taking care of the weeding which is a chore that nobody seems to enjoy doing," CEO Rory MacKean said.

Every year gardeners start out with such high hopes.

"At the start of the season, everyone's enthusiastic, they go they get some new plants from their local garden center, they plant them, they put 'em down and the weeds they start to take over."

And the fun is sucked right out of the garden.

"And people lose enthusiasm...they look out there and they're like 'I don't want to deal with that,'" MacKean says.

MacKean says 'Tertill' is the answer to your weeding problem and it never takes a day off.

"It's a solar powered, autonomous, self-sufficient robot that lives out in the garden. It charges itself up and as its wandering, it'll look for any weeds that might be growing. If it sees any, it has a little weed whacker on the bottom and it chops down the weeds."

Problem solved...but the weeds are not taken by the root.

"Because the robot is out there every day, it doesn't actually matter. The robot doesn't care. It'll just keep chopping the top off of the weed. What eventually happens is the weed will die."

Tertill is in beta testing now; the company says it hopes to see it in backyards next year.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Jeff Brown reports