These Students Designed a Remote-Controlled Lawnmower Using a Raspberry Pi
The RC mower is operated via an Xbox controller and uses a camera and computer vision to recognize obstacles in its path.
Some tasks in our lives would benefit from being automated, or at least partially, such as mowing the lawn. Now three Penn State Behrend students have made that a possibility by developing a remote-controlled lawnmower using funding from the IoT Research Lab at Behrend. The team bought a Greenworks 13" electric mower and removed any unnecessary parts, including the handle, clippings bag, and the rear wheels, which they replaced with castors.
With all the unnecessary parts removed, they then installed a Raspberry Pi that acts as the mower’s control unit, which allows the students to drive the mower using an Xbox controller. The left joystick is used for navigation while the right trigger operates the mower’s cutting blade. It’s also outfitted with a camera system and employs computer vision to identify obstacles within its path. If an object is detected, the mower will stop and reverse its path, making it semiautonomous.
Assistant professor of computer engineering Abdallah S. Abdallah, who oversaw the design team, envisions the RC mower as an ongoing project with revisions to its design over two or three-year periods. The first design, shown here, is remote-controlled, while the second would be fully autonomous, and the third envisioned as fully intelligent and able to connect to the internet.
As it stands now, the RC mower only has enough battery power to run for 24 minutes or just enough energy to cut small lawns, but that limited time should be addressed in future revisions.