Blog #1 - Automatic Solar Powered Lawn Mower

 

Question 1:

Typical gas powered lawn mowers not only are harmful to the environment but also can be time consuming and take about 2 hours to fully mow a lawn. The main pollutants that gas powered lawn mowers emit include hydrocarbons, particulates, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. As stated by Mark Sodja from "A Greener Lawn: Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Your Lawn Mower", just using a gas powered lawn mower for 1 hour is roughly the same as driving your car 40 miles. 

On the other hand, robotic lawnmowers nowadays can be very costly with many models well over the $1000 mark. This is most likely due to the advanced electronics that the companies use.

The automated solar powered lawn mower that we plan to design and create, would save time, money, and be environmentally friendly. 

Question 2:

The image above from "A Greener Lawn: Reducing the Carbon Footprint of Your Lawn Mower" is a great way to look and compare the current ways to mow a lawn. Robotic lawn mowers are not on this comparison chart because they fluctuate too much between the different brands and models to get an average. As can be seen, gas powered mowers are more efficient when comparing the time to cut 1/5 acre but they come at a high cost of pollution emissions. The scythe and the hand powered push mower are the most environmentally friendly but are very time consuming. Thus creating a solar powered automatic lawn mower would achieve being environmentally friendly as well as being able to mow a lawn efficiently.

Further looking into the problem with gas powered lawn mowers, the image above can help visualize how much fuel is used in the United States to power them. Generally speaking, the amount of fuel can significantly be reduced if just 5-10% of the users who own a gas powered lawn mower, switched to an electric, hand powered, or a solar powered one.

Question 3:

The major challenge that our team will face later down the road is the implementation of sensors and a fully autonomous system that would allow the mower to make turns and adjustments necessary to navigate through the user's lawn. Our plan is to utilize technology that already exists to form our basis of our model. This technology can be seen in current day devices such as the Roomba vacuums that have many sensors along the front and sides that help guide and direct the robot throughout a given area. Being able to go from a device that cuts grass to a device that cuts grass fully on its own is a huge milestone.

Our team is considering a backup idea of using a remote control system if we can't manage to fully fabricate the autonomous one. The remote control system would work similarly to an RC car where a wireless remote controls the cars movement and direction.