  In this work we demonstrate a rapidly deployable weed classification system
that uses visual data to enable autonomous precision weeding without making
prior assumptions about which weed species are present in a given field.
Previous work in this area relies on having prior knowledge of the weed species
present in the field. This assumption cannot always hold true for every field,
and thus limits the use of weed classification systems based on this
assumption. In this work, we obviate this assumption and introduce a rapidly
deployable approach able to operate on any field without any weed species
assumptions prior to deployment. We present a three stage pipeline for the
implementation of our weed classification system consisting of initial field
surveillance, offline processing and selective labelling, and automated
precision weeding. The key characteristic of our approach is the combination of
plant clustering and selective labelling which is what enables our system to
operate without prior weed species knowledge. Testing using field data we are
able to label 12.3 times fewer images than traditional full labelling whilst
reducing classification accuracy by only 14%.
