A survey of robot lawn mowers

摘要

Lawn mowing is considered by many to be one of the most boring and tiring routine household tasks. It is also one of the most promising personal robot applications. Several devices have now been invented and some manufactured products are available for lawn mowing. The purpose of this paper is to survey the state of the art in robotic lawn mowers to highlight the requirements and capabilities of current devices. A brief survey of available robot products, typical patents and some testbed prototypes are presented. Some enabling technologies which could make the devices more capable are also suggested. Some predictions indicate that the robot lawn mower will be the breakthrough device in robotics. The significance of this research lies in the presentation of an overview of a potential major market for personal robots.