[mowbot] nifty ideas

robin nospam at acm.org
Fri, 27 Sep 1996 01:20:31 +0100

Dominic Peterson <d.peterson nospam at qut.edu.au> wrote:
> Ooh, nasty thought that just occurred. How does the 'bot know to come in
> out of the rain. I'm in Brisbane, and when it rains, it RAINS. Do we
> simply (!?!) make the whole thing weather resistant/proof. Do we give it a
> rain detector?
I think it's going to have to be quite well sealed against the elements
since its environment is so mucky. But yes, a rain sensor would be handy,
since I suspect a big problem with any relatively low-power cutter is it
getting gummed up---and that's much more likely to happen when everything
is wet.

Extending the idea (into the realms of fantasy perhaps:-), we could record
sunlight hours (useful for figuring the solar charging time and deciding
when to rest). What about temperature and barometric pressure?
Armed with all these data, Mowbot could learn to predict rain before
it arrives!

Robin.

--
Copyright (C) 1996 R.M.O'Leary <robin nospam at acm.org>  All rights reserved.
For licence to copy, see http://dragon.swansea.linux.org.uk/mowbot/