Isn't 2) in fact measuring two uncorrelated things: hilliness and
number of obstacles?
My lawn would be categorised as small size, flat, few obstacles.
But to take that as the basis for the design would be too boring:-)
And what would I do if I moved, or wanted to build a Mowbot for a friend?
Instead, I have been thinking and talking about designs that will cope
with the explicit size requirement of 1 acre (called ``medium'' above,
though I must say I thought that was quite large when I set it as the size
limit) and the implicit assumptions of hilly, medium to high complexity.
> As lawn size grows, then power requirements would
> grow. Battery operation would be less practical
> as you go from small to medium to large lawns. I
> suspect from large to very large lawns, gas power
> would become more practical.
This neglects the very interesting possibility that several Mowbots could
share the work on a large area.
> (For the purpose of this discussion I'm defining
> navigation as "where am I now" and guidance as
> "which way do I go now".)
This is a good and succinct way of describing these two aspects.
> I hope this helps the discussion by giving a
> simple framework to some of the various problems
> and proposed solutions.
It certainly does. Can other people chip in with their own estimates
of size/hilliness/obstacles so we can see if we are being too ambitious
(or not sufficiently ambitious)?
> Sorry if I sound a little pedantic, I get that way sometimes. :)
Sounds like we'll get along just fine!
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/