Latest El Reg project: Rise of the Robot Sheep After seven years of faithful service, my lawn-clipping droid Mowbot has had to be retired... and a replacement is hard to obtain. Rather than face an ever-growing lawn, I've decided it's time to unlock the inventing shed and seek some reader advice. Robots were supposed to be doing pretty much all our manual labour by this …
If spinning blades are a less preffered option may I be the first to suggest fire?
I imagine a systematic flammable liquid spraying system followed by remote ignition and voila your grass is considerably shorter and neighborhood cats are as an added bonus probally going to avoid your garden for a while. Would need to be done less regularly than the conventional method therefore less maintenence.
The buried wire is an elegant method, but it does incur some sweat equity, and after all, isn't that what we're evading here? The idea of using a mower-mounted camera an QR signposts is a great alternative that allows one to program alternate mowing patterns to avoid embedded streaks.
But it also requires some sophisticated optics, and could get foiled by obstructions such as trees.
I'd propose another alternative navigation system which retains the programming flexibility of the QR code / camera scheme, and that would involve planting ultrasonic transponders around the yard, and triangulating based on the time delay from the mower's interrogation "beep" to the receipt time of the transponders' response beeps. The slower acoustic propagation velocity will allow for high-precision location determination without requiring nanosec timing measurements.
Beacons could be identified by unique ultrasonic frequencies, and use of parallel -channel DSP could be applied to time-of-arrival determination. And the physical layer hardware would be trivial to implement. Beacons would require little power, and could run indefinitely given small solar panels.
Will it have a container for the clippings and, if so, then, when the container is full, can you get it to locate the compost bin (even if I have to stick one of Chistoph's QR codes to it), climb up it, remove the lid (optional, I may possibly be capable to remembering to do this before starting the mower) and deposit said clippings in the bin before carrying on where it left off?
"I've decided it's time to unlock the inventing shed and seek some reader advice."
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Is Mr. Travaglia unavailable, down under in Aotearoa or some similar place with more vowels than is healthy? He obviously has more devious mind than your average El Reg reader, and if I ever wanted to build a killer robot I'd contact him immediately.
I tried changing roombas sweeper beater bar for a home made cutting bar... Only problem was that the missus wanted to hoover the hallway, didnt realise what I had done and shredded the carpet.
I was in the dog house and relegated back to hoovering again after converting her precious robo-sucker.
Surely you could strap a mower to the front of Stephen Hawking's wheelchair. That would have enough power and weight to push stuff around, and it's covered in tech, so presumably it could be controlled remotely?
BTW I'm not condoning the hijacking of the Prof himself, but what the hey, he's not got anything better to do, and he could do any work remotely over the Wifi link while trundling around the lawn.
You've got that the wrong way round mate. It's goats that rip the grass out by the roots, whereas sheep only crop the grass. I know because every couple of years or so we go out feral goat shooting up at my mate's farm because the bastards destroy the sheep paddocks, and it sure as hell ain't the sheep that do the damage. In fact even the roos do more damage than the sheep!
At the Gorge Wildlife Park near Adelaide, there's an even more vivid example: a series of small paddocks or large enclosures, each containing a few specimens of one type of animal. The one with the goats has been eroded down to more than a foot below ground level across *every square inch* of the enclosure. No other animal does this so destructively.
It sounds like you have already nailed the First of Larry Wall's Three Great Virtues of a Programmer (i.e. Laziness, for the truly lazy the other two are Impatience and Hubris - give yourself a a pat on the back for not bothering to look them up).
Impatience should require the use of Off the Shelf parts - possibly an ideal opportunity to buy a Raspberry Pi if/when they ever become available.
As for Hubris, I'd suggest giving the Mk2 it's own web interface, plus real-time webcam feed.
However, going back to Laziness for a minute. I don;' feel that having the device controllable from a phone or PC quite does it, for the truly lazy. Surely the object of complete laziness is for the device to do everything itself? Possibly up to and including re-ordering it's own SLA batteries when it detects the current ones are failing (shades of 2010 A Space Odyssey:, perhaps? Just keep it away from hard vacuum.).
One final point on the topic of a cylindrical cutter. Check out the blades that woodworkers use in planer/thicknessers. Apart from being scary sharp, really: SCARY sharp, they could be the sort of thing you'd be looking for. With a few adaptations, the Mk2 might even keep your hedges in trim.
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no matter how sharp your stanley blades are, and how fast or slow your spinning plank of wood, you'll never get all the grass at the same height.
So I suggest the use of lasers and small mirrors from the outside of a disco mirror-ball. position the mirrors all around the circumference of your lawn (reflective side inwards). Then set up one of those military spec lasers at the desired height on the top of a spinning lawn waterer gizmo. Switch on the spinning, switch on the laser, and presto, uniformly cut lawn. just make sure the lawn is empty before you begin the process, no responsibility will be accepts for any cats missing their paws below the kneecaps.
I for one want to be the first to welcome our new electronic Ovine Overlords.
May I suggest using a modified electric hedge clipper? Might be safer than whirling blades.
Also, tons of images and info on "Electric Sheep" on the web including life size Japanese robots with real wool.
FWIW, Arduino, Arduino, Arduino.... you won't have to reinvent the sheep!
I have a John Deer self-propelled petrol mower that mulches the clippings.
In the right conditions it works very well although the build quality is crap.
It works best if the grass is dry and you only try to trim 1½" off the lawn.
The secret sauce is in the shape of the blade, it has a couple of twists on the trailing edge which AFAIK pulverises the clippings to dust.
The grass here is usually wet and too long so I'm working on the laser cutting version with mulching after-burner.
Laser Actuated Remotely Driven - Android Slave System?
Proximity sensors (Laser against fence all 4 directions) and a pre-programmed layout would give exact position at all times, as long as you tell it never to go out of area, then proxmity sensors on bottom to stop it from hitting things. Set it all up on a RasberryPi with that being the controller. you know I might have a crack at this myself converting an electric one and using an upside down L shaped pole in corner to stop cable snagging.
I have had a Electrolux Automower for 5 years. While the iPhone gets out a new version every year and gets lots of interest, this stuff doesn't change. I have been ready to buy an update for the last 2 years but are still using the old one. The first and really simple upgrade would be the necessity of guide wires. The machine already measures how far it goes by counting wheel rotation plus it has programmed direction changes so it know the angles of direction changes. Even without a GPS it should easily construct a map of the lawn, and with todays flash prices keep up to date where it is and have been (sharable by wifi). Second and equally simple upgrade is to get rid of need to reprogram timing between spring and autumn. The machine already measures necessary force on cutter so it should easily be able to find out where grass is growing fastest and visit accordingly and rest when it is not necessary to cut. Thirdly a camera with color analysis should be able to tell where and what kind of fertlizer is missing. Fouth the machine should be able to deliver this fertilizer. Fifth doing the lawn edges would give time to drink even more beer on Saturdays. Electrolux, I am ready any day to test a beta.
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