The robots are coming…to mow your lawn.
Just like how the iRobot Roomba Vacuum Cleaner revolutionized the way people clean their floors, new technology out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wants to change how you cut your grass, and it’s working with John Deere to bring its robot lawn mower technology to market.
Built by a UIUC engineering student and two university faculty members, the project is working with Moline, IL-based John Deere’s Tango robotic lawn mower to make the autonomous grass cutter smarter and more efficient to use. The technology, which is three years in the making, is designed to help you mow your lawn the same way the Roomba vacuums your floor–with no human interaction and with very little setup.
By equipping the Tango lawn mower with the university’s omnidirectional-vision-based system, the team at UIUC is helping the device better navigate a plot of land by making cleaner, straighter lines and noticing things like rocks and other obstructions. The project, which was presented last month at the IEEE International Conference for Robotics and Automation, is nearing completion and is currently being tested at the John Deere Technology Innovation Center and in John Deere employees’ yards, according to the university.
The technology is being built by UIUC mechanical science and engineering PhD candidate Junho Yang, along with Professors Soon-Jo Chung and Seth Hutchinson, and it’s being funded by John Deere.
From ChicagoInno/StreetWise: https://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2015/07/15/uiuc-is-working-with-john-deere-on-robotic-lawn-mowing-technology/