Niqo Robotics unveiled the RoboWeeder F50, a 46-to-50-foot AI weeding machine built for large US row-crop and specialty-crop operations, at FIRA USA 2026 in Yakima, Washington. The company says the F50 covers up to 25 acres per hour, and orders are open now for delivery ahead of a planned 2027 commercial release.
The F50 pairs 14 of Niqo's AI camera units with a 350-nozzle spray array across its full width, which the company says delivers more than 99% precision accuracy when targeting weeds while sparing crops. The machine weighs roughly 4,900 pounds, tops out at 4.7 mph in the field, and requires a tractor rated at 135 horsepower or larger to pull it. It joins Niqo's existing 20-foot flagship RoboWeeder and 24-foot F24 as the widest of three models now sold in North America.
Solving a Labor and Herbicide Problem
Niqo founder Jaisimha Rao said the wider machine responds directly to grower feedback. "Growers told us our narrower machine couldn't keep pace with their operational needs," Rao said, pointing to large-acreage operations where a 20-foot pass simply takes too many hours to cover a field between weed flushes. The company says its AI can generate a working detection algorithm for a crop it has never seen before within a single overnight training run, reaching better than 85% accuracy immediately and climbing to 99.6% commercial-grade accuracy within a few weeks of field use.
That speed-to-accuracy claim matters because precision weeding's main pitch to growers is reduced herbicide use without sacrificing yield. Competitors including Switzerland's Ecorobotix, which says its weed-spraying robots have treated 600,000 hectares while cutting herbicide volumes by 86%, and France's Naïo Technologies have pursued similar precision-spray or mechanical-weeding approaches, but most existing machines top out at narrower working widths than the F50's near-50-foot boom. A wider platform lets a single pass cover more ground per fuel cycle, which is the main economic lever large-acreage US growers care about.
What Comes Next
Niqo is taking F50 orders now for next-season delivery, ahead of full commercial release in 2027, meaning the first machines working US fields under full revenue contracts likely won't appear until the 2027 growing season. The company has not disclosed pricing for the F50 or said how many units it expects to sell in its first year. Whether growers accept the larger machine's higher upfront cost in exchange for faster field coverage will determine how quickly Niqo can scale past its narrower RoboWeeder and F24 models.