autocut

autoCut

autoCut is an automatic lawn mower robot. It features:

• Four weel drive with kink steering
• Motorized mowing height leveling
• Two 85 watt mowing motors, each equipped with two very sharp blades, able to snap back on hard obstacles
• On the fly interchangeable LiPo-battery with voltage monitoring
• Wifi network connection for web interface which includes gamepad remote control
• Raspberry Pi as its main computer and head of the microcontroller i2c-network

progress

What it can do already:

• [drive system] works pretty much brilliant
• [power supply] Measures individual cell voltages and rings an audible alarm in case of undervoltage or improper connected battery. Handles battery changes without losing power for the control system
• [main module] Raspberry works quite well with ArchLinux ARM and provides a webinterface on the network. Will be replaced by Cubieboard 2 since RasPi has hardware I2C issues
• [mowing module] Runs the mowing motors with a reasonably decent rpm regulation algorithm. Electrical mowing height adjustment through web interface is implemented.

What it can't do yet:

• [power supply] Measure the current as well as the total battery voltage
• [general] No environmental sensoring for automatic movement yet, so manual control is needed

Things to improve:

• [power supply] design a proper pcb (its on a prototyping board so far)
• [mowing module] Change FETs for ones with lower heat dissipation and enhance the rpm regulation algorithm

Preserved for the future:

• Build an automatic battery changing and charging station