On Monday afternoon, at Hodgkiss Farm, a handful of Tertills killed weeds as they walked through the garden. John Chase, who grew up on a family farm, co-founded a company that produces autonomous landscaping robots. Photo by Andre von Hornleiden

The invention of tools designed by people who grew up on Hotchkiss Farm aims to make maintaining a healthy garden easier than before.

A company co-founded by John Chase is making a solar-powered robot that can remove weeds and sprouts from the yard. Tertill, which was launched on Amazon in 2021, uses sensors to target weeds and then cuts them with a small weeder on the bottom of the chassis. Chase moved to Jamestown in 1997 at the age of 7 and was responsible for the hardware of the project.

"It did a very good job," said Chase of the Robotics Team at Lawn School.

When she died, Chase’s family inherited his grandmother’s property on Hotchkiss Farm. He now lives in Newton, Massachusetts, but his innovative ideas were conceived by working on 65 acres of land on North Road.

"Growing up on a farm, you will do a lot of different things, some electrical things, some plumbing works," he said. "You need to understand a lot of things. I think robotics attracts me in this way. You need to understand the whole thing as a system, not just focus on a part of it."

In 2008, Chase graduated from North Kingston High School and studied at Northeastern University in Boston. He received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 2013 and a master's degree in business administration in 2015.

While at Tohoku University, Chase worked as an intern for iRobot, the manufacturer of the automatic vacuum cleaner Roomba. Through contact with the company, he learned that Joe Jones, the co-inventor of Roomba, was designing a garden robot, and an autonomous machine for land management combined his interests.

"I am very interested in robots, but I grew up on a farm, so I am also very interested in agriculture," he said. "I think this is really cool."

The two original inventors, Jones and Rory McKean, conceived the project before Chase participated. They used to work together at Harvest Automation to make a large robot for moving nursery plants. These people are interested in making another agricultural robot separate from Harvest, which can weed. Weeding was chosen because, like vacuuming, it is a housework that is repeated regularly.

"This is a task that almost everyone needs to complete," Chase said. "No one really likes weeding. It's a somewhat uniform operating environment, and it's very simple. You can design a small robot for the price people actually pay."

When Chase joined the project, he only knew that it was led by Harvest employees and aimed to build a consumer-grade agricultural robot. One of the factors considered was the weeding tool. This piqued his interest, and Chase eventually became the co-founder of the Tertill brand. He leads the hardware department of the project, using computer-aided design and 3-D modeling for mechanical design when developing prototypes.

"There are some off-the-shelf components, such as motors, and many custom-designed parts," he said. "It is considering purchasing parts and designing custom parts. Everything that is not a circuit board."

The first prototype was created in 2015, and Chase joined the project in 2016. After they decided on the final concept and design, a Kickstarter campaign was launched in 2017 to fund the project. According to Tertill public relations representative Barbara Shea, more than 1,200 supporters donated US$312,000, more than double the target of US$120,000. The robots will be delivered to donors in the spring of 2019 and will be put into commercial use in 2020.

Tertill is designed to be placed outdoors where weeds grow. It works autonomously, but requires a boundary, such as a fence. The robot walks randomly in the garden and cannot detect weeds one inch tall; anything higher than this, the robot will consider a plant regardless of it. In addition to the weeding machine, the robot can also use wheels to eliminate weeds.

"This is an interesting discovery," Chase said. "By driving around and disturbing the soil, it tends to damage the weeds when they sprout and before they actually start to grow. This also helps to suppress the weeds."

Chase said that Tertill's philosophy is similar to the earlier Roomba model, they don't have advanced features such as mapping. The main difference is that Tertill is powered by the sun and moves a small amount of outdoor areas every day, eventually covering the entire enclosed space. The device can also withstand bad weather, so it can be placed in the rain. Tertill can be placed throughout the season to prevent weeds from sprouting, or it can be controlled after weeds are manually pulled out. Chase's family farm in Jamestown currently has several Tertills managing the land.

According to Chase, the response to Tertill has been positive. Kristine Averill, a research assistant and weed ecologist at Cornell University, called it "shocking."

"You see that Tertill's weed control is as good as manual weeding," she said.

In future models, Chase hopes that the team can set higher limits for the robot. For example, Tertill requires 8 inches of plant spacing, which means it is not the best choice for a raised bed.

"We are exploring some different options," he said. "Maybe there is a smaller one or one that can be navigated better."

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