Grainswest - Tech 2026

Tech 2026 grainswest.com 23 Now available in the U.S., TerraClear of Bellevue, Wash., will launch its TerraScout Autonomous Robot and a companion drone mapping system in Canada in 2027. The company initially developed equipment to map and remove rocks from farmland. The expansion to include weeds was natural, said Don Scribner, TerraClear director of product. To deliver immediate results, the company developed Aerial Edge Processing, a drone system that processes weed maps at the field edge during swap-outs of the battery and SD card. Alternatively, a ground-based TerraScout unit can roll over the field to capture an 18-metre imagery swath at 19 to 24 kilometres per hour and process on the go while it pipes data to the cloud. Field tested in the U.S., the autonomous TerraScout will make its Canadian debut in the eastern provinces for corn and soybeans. Scribner said it will map rocks, do pre- and post-plant row following, conduct stand count for corn and green-on- green weed detection for both crops. He noted the unit can produce spot spray maps and serves well as a field scout across multiple passes to produce a clear picture of the weed situation. “We are working on developing models for canola and wheat,” said Scribner. “Those are obviously very high priority for us. We do a lot of rock business in Canada already, so we want to continue to bring this to Canadian farmers and give them both rocks and weeds.” The system now delivers weed count and density, and the next upgrade being developed promises to identify weeds by species. Further work is being done to capture weed height as an indicator for control timing. The company’s eventual ambition is to produce end-to-end scouting capabilities that include such aspects as pest identification and crop growth stage. As a McGill University undergraduate student studying laser technology, Amina Hussein read about the challenges farmers face in sustainably feeding the world’s growing population. “I wanted to help address this looming challenge,” she said. Later, as a PhD student, she read scientific papers about how laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS, may be used in agriculture. Now a laser plasma physicist and University of Alberta associate engineering professor, Hussein leads the development of a portable soil analysis device that uses LIBS. Currently a prototype, the device is intended to supply instant nutrient profile data and save the time and expense of sampling and lab analysis. The target is commercialization. Funded by Alberta Innovates, the project team includes specialists in agricultural machine learning, electrical and computer engineering and soil science. The briefcase-like device plugs into a laptop. When a soil sample placed in the device is hit with its laser, ionized gas-like plasma is produced. As this cools it emits light. The device’s spectrometer registers the light wavelengths produced by the elements present in the sample. Soil can be difficult to analyze in this way due to its complex composition. Extensive expertise with laser plasma has allowed Hussein’s team to refine the device. “We are uniquely trained to understand this interaction of the laser with the material and with the plasma, so we could optimize the system,” said Hussein. The system’s analysis software displays soil components in real time. It can zero in on elements of interest such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Machine learning software has increased accuracy and enabled the classification of samples by soil type. Accuracy of these functions improve as additional data is collected. Put it on autopilot Stay grounded TerraClear Portable soil analysis TerraScout maps rocks and weeds. Photo courtesy of TerraClear. The LIBS device is a work in progress. Photo courtesy of the University of Alberta.