Available Technologies

Technology

Mowing the lawn is a task most would rather not do, or at the least find monotonous. Mowing the lawn takes considerable time and can be exhausting or expensive if one pays a professional company to do the task for them. Currently there are few autonomous lawn mowers on the market, and these lawn mowers are extremely expensive initially, and come with extensive installation costs.

Researchers at UAH have developed a Remote Control Lawn Mower Attachment that attaches to a lawn mower, which the homeowner most likely already possesses. This attachment features a universal mounting system that mounts to any conventional mower, two methods of powering the attachment, and can either be remote controlled or fully autonomous.

The electronics on the attachment are powered either by a generator driven by the gas engine on the lawn mower, or by rechargeable batteries mounted on the attachment. This technology developed at UAH also has the functionality to either be remote controlled by the homeowner, or fully autonomous. The fully autonomous technology utilizes Real Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS software to map the homeowner’s yard, allowing the mower to learn permanent obstacles such as trees. Bump sensors and sonar sensors are integrated to detect other non-permanent obstacles in the path of the lawn mower. This technology turns mowing the lawn into a task that is enjoyable and fun through the use of remote control, or a task that does not require any effort through the autonomous capabilities.