• time;2025-07-03 15:56:19

On June 28th, 2025, the Huagong Technology Innovation Day event released numerous "black technology" products. Among them, the first domestic laser weeding machine has attracted particular attention.

Laser weeding machine was tested on site. (Image provided by interviewee)

In its display video, this square headed and square brain car is traveling at a constant speed in a tobacco field in Yunnan. Its "eyes" are like experienced farmers, scanning threats on the fields at high speed. Suddenly! It locks onto a weed closely attached to the tobacco seedling, and in an instant, a beam of invisible laser accurately hits the meristem of the grass stem. After a gentle "sizzling" sound, the weed vaporizes instantly, and the tobacco seedling is unharmed.

Weeds have long been a major threat to global agricultural development. Traditional manual weed control has high costs, heavy chemical weed control pollution, and mechanical weed control operations require technical accumulation. Laser weed control, as a cutting-edge technology in the industry, is accelerating its entry into the market with advantages such as high efficiency and safety.

In the seedling stage, due to the small target, mechanical weeding machines are basically unable to work, and manual bending can remove up to half an acre per day. However, the optimal weeding period for each crop is only 7 to 10 days. "The person in charge of Huagong Technology introduced that their laser weeding machine can remove 10000 weeds per laser head in one hour, and through its hybrid power solution, it can work 24/7, greatly improving weeding efficiency. Without damaging the soil or polluting, weeds cannot grow for three months

How to enable the machine to accurately identify weeds during dynamic movement and avoid "accidental injury"?

High quality data and algorithms are key, "said the person in charge. Currently, the R&D team has collected massive images of crops such as soybeans, corn, and tobacco, and successfully trained artificial intelligence algorithms to accurately distinguish between seedlings and weeds under conditions such as rainy weather and strong light. On this basis, they also solved the stability problem of the machine when passing through complex terrain, allowing the moving laser beam to follow closely and lock onto the target.

The weeds have been laser burned and raised repeatedly with green smoke. (Image provided by interviewee)

After multiple iterations, Huagong Technology's weeding machine has now entered the stage of large-scale field validation. After the prototype made its public debut last year, many cooperatives from across the country have come to inquire and purchase it, and its mass production plan has been postponed to next year. In terms of selling price, the person in charge revealed that for agricultural cooperatives of general size, based on the calculation of weeding twice a year, the purchase cost can be recovered in three years.

On site, Huagong Technology also launched cutting-edge products in the fields of optical communication and high-end equipment manufacturing, including 3.2T optical modules/CPO optical engines, complex surface six axis laser micro hole processing equipment, and Huagong Zhuli Industrial Intelligent Agent Platform.

Since its listing, Huagong Technology has invested billions of yuan in innovative research and development, breaking through in key core technologies and achieving more than 70 "global firsts" and "domestic firsts". At the same time, its products are selling well worldwide and the order volume continues to rise. In the first quarter of this year, the company's operating revenue increased by 52% year-on-year, and net profit increased by 40% year-on-year.

Article reprinted in: Hubei Daily