Redmond's Aigen trains farm robots on AI-generated weeds

Aigen, the Redmond company that builds solar-powered robots to pull weeds, is also generating digital weeds and plants to teach those robots what to pull, GeekWire reported on Friday. Co-founder and chief technology officer Richard Wurden said training on a new crop used to take three to four years of labelled photos. With the synthetic set, which Aigen calls Alchemy, it takes about a week. That has opened asparagus, hops, flowers, lettuce and other crops.

Wurden spoke from FIRA USA, a three-day agricultural robotics show at Yakima's State Fair Park that wrapped up Thursday. He said Aigen made several sales there, including to growers it previously could not serve, and that the company is nearly sold out of robots for the 2027 season. U.S. diesel prices are up roughly 70 percent from a year ago and averaged nearly $6.30 a gallon this month, according to AAA figures cited by GeekWire. Wurden said rival machines are often pulled by diesel tractors, while Aigen's robots run on solar panels with a battery.