Came here to say this too. Saw Tensorfield (2018) demo'd in Shenzhen a few years ago, nice people. Quick web search reveals ecoRobotix (2018; Switzerland), Blue River Technology (2021; Indiana), Farmwise (2019; California), Naio (France; 2018), HortiBot (2008; Denmark)... there are surely more.
I routinely make a fuss about truck drivers. Dispatch will schedule them for back to back driving shifts and then call the cops on them if they decide they cannot drive safely and need to sleep. The cops are there to do a welfare check (harass them) to get them going again
Unless the driver has parked in an unsafe location (fire lane, impeding traffic, etc) I cannot imagine a police officer would give a damn about whether or not a truck driver was behind schedule.
There are pretty strict legal limits (in the US at least) over how long a driver can be on the road without taking a break.
In fact, unless they only hire owner-operators, falling asleep at the wheel and causing an accident will almost certainly jack up the company's insurance rates, much worse than them running behind an overly tight schedule.
Unless the cops were told they absconded with the truck.
An abusive trucking company can accuse their drivers of steeling trucks or cargo when they're behind schedule. I've never heard of that happening, but I don't doubt the poster who said it does. It's too bad we don't come down harder on those who make such bad faith accusations of steeling.
I have no idea where you are from, but "absconding" isn't really something the police get involved in.
Either the driver has a right to be in the truck, at the location he is at, or not. If he does, the police don't care, because there is no crime. If he doesn't, that is theft.
If it is theft, they don't let the driver drive on with a promise to behave; the truck (and all the goods in it) get impounded to be claimed by the company and the driver gets hauled off to jail. That would be a way worse outcome for the company.
And that's excluding the potential legal fallout from reporting their own employee for theft because the employee was taking a break mandated by law; not only would the employer act in bad faith, it would also incriminate them in regards to forcing their employees to break the law!
Is it even possible to create a robot weeder without AI? It needs some sort of reasoning system to identify what is a plant.