What is in-row weeding?
In-row weeding removes weeds between the crop plants inside a row: the narrow strip a normal hoe cannot reach without cutting the crop. It is also called intra-row weeding or inter-plant weeding.
In German it is "Hacken in der Reihe", in Czech "plečkování v řádku", in French "binage sur le rang" or "désherbage intra-rang".
What is the difference between inter-row and in-row weeding?
Inter-row weeding works the soil between the crop rows with fixed tools such as duck-foot blades or discs. It is fast and well established, but it leaves a narrow strip along each row untouched. In-row weeding works exactly in that strip, between the individual plants.
Camera row guidance vs plant-level AI detection
Both use a camera, but they answer different questions.
Camera row guidance recognises the line of the crop row and steers the whole hoe sideways so the inter-row tools stay centred between the rows. It does not see individual plants and does not weed inside the row.
Plant-level detection recognises every single crop plant and moves tools into and out of the row around it. Only this makes weeding between the plants possible. AROW is a plant-level system.
What is the root point, and why does it matter?
The root point is the spot where the stem of a crop plant enters the soil. A blade that knows this coordinate can pass as close to the plant as possible without cutting it. Systems that look for the leaf instead are misled by wind, overlapping leaves and weeds growing under the crop.
The AROW box is a sealed unit mounted above one crop row. It contains one 2D camera, two 3D cameras, four flash LEDs and an AI module, finds the root point of each plant and tells the blades when to open and close.