Development and Evaluation of a Remote Controlled Electric Lawn Mower

This work focuses on the development of a fully autonomous lawn mower that can be used by people with limited mobility. The lawn mower can be set to cover a predefined area autonomously or it can be controlled manually via a radio-control (RC) transmitter, which allows the user to remotely control the lawn mower in any direction, turn the mower motor at a desired speed, and adjust the grass cutting height. In autonomous mode, the user can also define the area to be mowed and program the grid pattern the lawn mower will follow. Once the prototype was completed, the lawn mower was field tested to verify the overall functionality and accuracy of the autonomous mission plan and to determine the overall runtime battery life. Results of the fully-functional prototype demonstrate a successful autonomous operation.