Cool project, but why mow it all in the first place? Do yourself and absolutely nature a favor and let it grow. We need every patch of natural land we can get, as biodiversity and insect populations are continually decreasing. Mow some patches for the humans (because standing in a buggy tall field is just no bueno), but leave the rest for nature. Rent or borrow some goats or sheep if you really want it kept lower; at…
>but why mow it all in the first place? Because providing convenient habitat for grass dwelling rodents adjacent to your home will result in some fraction of them trying to move in.
Adding to this: depending on where you live, the rodent issue is made worse by the vipers they attract. I generally don't mind snakes, rat snakes are actually quite nice, but I think most people don't want to worry about a rattlesnake nipping their heel when they step out their front door. This is made worse by the selective pressure humans place on rattlesnakes to discourage rattling (those that rattle get noticed and killed.)
I think there are probably better ways to address this problem than mowing grass right up against your house though. Ringing your house with mulched gardens or even gravel patches (particularly french drains, in areas prone to flooding) is a good alternative, presuming you don't have a HOA forbidding it..
I understand why you would do it, but using robot arms to control another robot seems like a lot of accidental complexity. Surely there has to be a generation of tractor that's new enough that most functions are exposed on CANbus but old enough that it isn't locked down yet?
The lockdowns are only for the user-facing diagnostic port. I'm not aware of any vehicle that uses encryption & authentication on the inner buses. Your only challenge is to reverse-engineer the meaning of the messages.
What if you ripped out all the control electronics, leaving only the actuators, and replaced the control circuits with off the shelf parts? I expect it might cost a pretty penny, but it should be doable right?
No mention of how it handles obstacles; sticks, rocks, holes, small animals, etc. I mowed lawns for several years as a teenager using riding mowers similar to this. I can't count the number of times I had to stop, get off, move a stick so it doesn't jam the blades, move a rock so it doesn't get flung into a nearby window...or even just slow down because the grass was too thick for the mower to handle. It strikes me a…
I had my share of pain with those obstacles. That was my first thought when I saw this project. The workaround, which I didn't implement yet, is to build a smooth and clean garden. Of course branches fall, ants build, all sort of animals dig, bushes grow id you give them a couple of weeks at the wrong time of the year, etc. That lawnmower is also much bigger than mine.
The neighbor lady toss rocks on your lawn from working in her flower bed. Neighbor kids leave toys, tennis and golf balls and... claw hammers!!! (forgotten in the grass after building their secret day fort in your back yard). Wine bottles from the other neighbors garden party. A hiking boot from... I have no idea!!! And don't forget stuck sprinkler heads. Spray paint cans from the local juvenile delinquents... On and on...
Depending on where you live those rodents won't do any harm though. Or simply leave again because the cannot find food, which is like the #1 thing to deal with in case of rodents. Moreover you'd need a serious amount of 'deadzone' around your house before rodents won't cross it, no? It's not like they only can cover distances of few metres. All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if the…
> Depending on where you live those rodents won't do any harm though. Or simply leave again because the cannot find food, which is like the #1 thing to deal with in case of rodents. > All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if there is any. Yes, any evidence for your claims would be appreciated. Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector?
Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector
All species? I actually don't know. But with 'depending on where you live' I also menat situations like mice entering your unused basement etc.
Anyway: I'm mainly questioning whether 'long vegetation around my house means more chance of rodents in my house' is something general. Also because it's not my experience. Then again I don't live in, say, Australia.
> Depending on where you live those rodents won't do any harm though. Or simply leave again because the cannot find food, which is like the #1 thing to deal with in case of rodents. > All in all, this type of claim should be backed by research :) Curious if there is any. Yes, any evidence for your claims would be appreciated. Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector?
Are there places where mice/rats aren't considered a disease vector All species? I actually don't know. But with 'depending on where you live' I also menat situations like mice entering your unused basement etc. Anyway: I'm mainly questioning whether 'long vegetation around my house means more chance of rodents in my house' is something general. Also because it's not my experience. Then again I don't live in, say, Au…
> situations like mice entering your unused basement etc.
This is a bad situation, if anybody ever goes in that basement for any reason ever, they're at risk of catching numerous diseases from the rodent feces they stir up into the air by walking around. Hantavirus is spread this way, and Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome kills about a third of the people who catch it. There is no reason to accept this risk if you have any other choice.
I love the idea of this because I hate lawn maintenance. But the idea of letting software I wrote run around with whirling blades of death underneath of it would keep me from doing it.
I totally agree! Mower safety was also one of my worries once. It can be deadly even without software controlling it. A few days back in Poland a mower threw a piece of wire straight into a boy's heart (the kid is all right now). That being said, there is no way for the operator to constantly monitor what is happening around the mower. A set of sensors and software can be better at it. We can install cameras and LIDARs all around the mower and take care of safety better than humans do.
There are challenges though:
1. You need to design the system in a way it fails safe. There is no explicit norm on how to do that yet. We can adapt existing norms from machine and robot safety for that purpose, but we risk missing something.
2. All the specification efforts right now are going in the direction of humans supervising software. The RC-controlled/autonomous mower is supposed to be always watched by someone. Firstly, humans suck at supervising stuff, it is a very boring and frustrating task, during which it is easy to get tired and lose focus. Secondly, people will quickly find a better task to do in the meanwhile: trim the hedge, do the detailing, do some weeding, while the mower is doing fine :)
3. Safe vision systems are expensive. It is hard to support a 360 deg. field of view for both cameras and LIDARs at a competitive cost. There is a huge temptation to reduce the BOM cost to compete with human labor.
Now it is time for a shameless plug: personally, I am involved in making an autonomy kit for z-turn mowers. It is not an easy task.
The lockdowns are only for the user-facing diagnostic port. I'm not aware of any vehicle that uses encryption & authentication on the inner buses. Your only challenge is to reverse-engineer the meaning of the messages.
What if you ripped out all the control electronics, leaving only the actuators, and replaced the control circuits with off the shelf parts? I expect it might cost a pretty penny, but it should be doable right?
At least for engine management that's definitely doable, there are off-the-shelf ECUs for race/custom cars that are meant to be used like this (configurable via USB so you can tune every parameter).
For everything else you will most likely need to go custom but it's absolutely possible.
Asking isn't enough, but proper fences should both make it impossible to get in without significant effort and also do a good job at containing the machine should it try to run away. It's up to you to run the numbers whether the cost of securing the area is less than what you spend (in terms of time/inconvenience/etc) manually mowing the lawn.
Coming from the UK I'm always amazed that many (suburban) Americans don't have 6-8 ft fences surrounding their back yard.
On the other hand, if everyone's yard is accessible, it's unlikely that yours will be the one subject to anything bad so I guess it's a number's game.
I had my share of pain with those obstacles. That was my first thought when I saw this project. The workaround, which I didn't implement yet, is to build a smooth and clean garden. Of course branches fall, ants build, all sort of animals dig, bushes grow id you give them a couple of weeks at the wrong time of the year, etc. That lawnmower is also much bigger than mine.
The neighbor lady toss rocks on your lawn from working in her flower bed. Neighbor kids leave toys, tennis and golf balls and... claw hammers!!! (forgotten in the grass after building their secret day fort in your back yard). Wine bottles from the other neighbors garden party. A hiking boot from... I have no idea!!! And don't forget stuck sprinkler heads. Spray paint cans from the local juvenile delinquents... On and…
It sounds like you have some really horrible neighbors. Not the neighbor kids but everyone else.
Now add some armor, machine gun and antitank missile, and it can be used in Ukraine. Ukrainian army has lack of heavy hardware compare to Russia, and there is no way to build it up quickly, and i wonder whether a fleet of cheap light armored remote controlled or [semi]autonomous vehicles can be even a better way to fight modern war.
And of course there is a very close task to mowing - de-mining, and there are already huge swaths of land there freed back from Russia which need demining, and there would be a lot more in the near future.