Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
For many years, standard lawn mowers have done a good job at lawn maintenance. However, mowing is a very time consuming and physically draining task. On top of that, there are potential safety risks accompanied with mowing the lawn. If the mower forgets to wear eye protection, something could fly up and injure their eyes or mower blades can cause injuries if unsafely used.
Autonomous technologies are rapidly expanding beyond just transportation, into health care, advanced cyber defense, and to smaller industries such as home assistants. Autonomy at its very roots is a monitoring network that can operate with little human intervention. Currently, two tech giants Honda and Bosch are leading the autonomous technology in home equipment. Their most famous outdoor home equipment is the autonomous lawnmower which are the HONDA MIIMO 40 LIVE and the BOSCH INDEGO M+700. These two innovative companies strive to enhance their customers' experience as a homeowner. Continued innovation in the lawn care realm will result in a healthier lawn and less maintenance requirements (Daley, 2016).
Recently with the arrival of remote operated devices such as drones & unmanned ground vehicles, engineers & hobbyists alike have created mowers that operate on remote-controlled device frequencies. Internet of Things is the future of current technology, and the market is expected to reach 1.6 trillion by 2025 (Balaji, Shanthini, Rooshan, & Sivaram, 2021).
Surveying has shown that one of the largest known issues of the era has been environmental pollution. In the process of understanding the importance of field efficiency and coverage, implementation of a solar panel and rechargeable battery will reduce greenhouse gases and reduce cost of resources when compared to the refueling cost of gas-powered mowers (Hikmet, Abdullah, & Onur, 2016) (Okafor, EEhujuo, & Johnson, 2016). All mowers are designed to operate in the rain and in temperatures up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. For Husqvarna, the mowers are designed to cut the lawn frequently, so that way they remove only a small amount of growth (Basen, 2019) (Peng, Run, & Zhigang, 2019).
With the advent of GPS can add further lawn mowing capabilities. Lawn mowing can ultimately be advanced and optimized using location triggered techniques (Yemao & Edith, 2015). Previous implementations of a smart mower included an electric lawn mower, two Ryobi 18V drills, a Ryobi 18V Compact Radio with Bluetooth Wireless Technology, three high performing batteries, two metal casters, two 4-inch hole dozer hole slaw, a Raspberry Pi 2 micro-Computer, eight channel relay board, along with two iPods and a 6-Port Supercharger (MacmeDan, 2015). Autonomous IoT mowing would be controlled via mobile phone applications and programmed communications. The process brings the use of communication to life among the two devices to drive the mower without the need for human interaction (Babangida, V Siva, & Pradeep, 2020) (Mutaz, Mahmoud, & Hisham, 2019). The fully automated system may contain components like camera, sonar, GPS, as well as an optocoupler sensor for identifying mown or unmown grass & solar (Bhateja, Sethi, Jain, & Mishra, 2020). A camera is then used to detect a grass field while optocoupler sensors are utilized to differentiate between cut and uncut grass (Wasif, 2011).
Relying on an autonomous lawn mower robot is very advantageous as it will be completing tasks with little to no contact from the end operator. This study aims at developing an economical autonomous lawn mower design and to implement a groundwork rover that may be further developed into a fully functioning autonomous lawn mower. Multiple features such as trajectory control, system monitoring, web application, and system parameters data collection was developed and tested. The results show the capability of an internal control system and a cloud based IoT platform to improve the system performance.