ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,543,614, issued on Feb. 10.
"Robotic weed removal system for aesthetic mulch gardens" was invented by Emmet Edward Hand (Arlington, Va.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An apparatus and method for removing weeds from an aesthetic mulch garden using an autonomous battery-powered differential-wheeled robot is disclosed. The boundary of the domain of said aesthetic mulch garden is predefined by the user and said robot is confined to patrol within said domain. The robot searches for weeds using machine vision which seeks colorimetric contrast between weeds and mulch and undergoes a novel randomized reflective trajectory to patrol said domain. ...