Robotic Mower Travelling Containment Zones for Even Lawn Coverage
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Solution Overview
Problem
Robotic lawn mowers often inefficiently cover lawn areas due to random travel patterns and varying property boundaries, leading to uneven cutting and potential getting stuck in narrow passages.
Innovation Solution
Defining a travelling containment zone within the work region, which is smaller than the overall area, allowing the mower to operate autonomously and move across the region, ensuring even coverage and avoiding obstacles.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the mower operates in a random travel pattern within the entire work region, then it can cover the area autonomously, but it may get stuck in narrow passages and miss certain areas, reducing cutting quality
Solution Approach 1:
The work region is divided into multiple sub-regions or zones that the mower systematically visits. Instead of random movement across the entire area, the mower segments the coverage task into manageable portions, ensuring complete coverage without getting stuck in problematic areas.
Solution Approach 2:
The mower dynamically adjusts its travel pattern and containment zone based on real-time conditions. The system modifies its operation mode between systematic zone coverage and random exploration depending on the current situation, optimizing both reliability and coverage completeness.
2Reliability
If the mower uses a random travel pattern to access all areas including narrow passages, then it can potentially reach difficult areas, but it may get unduly hung-up and extend completion time before requiring recharging
Solution Approach 1:
The mower performs preliminary systematic coverage of easily accessible areas first, establishing a baseline coverage pattern. Difficult-to-reach areas are addressed strategically rather than through prolonged random exploration, reducing time spent on low-yield movements.
Solution Approach 2:
The mower quickly skips through or avoids areas known to cause prolonged entrapment, using systematic patterns to cover most areas efficiently. Time-consuming random exploration in problematic zones is minimized or eliminated in favor of more efficient coverage strategies.
3Area of stationary object
If the mower operates within a fixed boundary wire defining the entire property, then it can cover the full work region, but the random pattern combined with variable boundary shapes creates inefficiency and access difficulties
Solution Approach 1:
The large work region defined by the boundary wire is segmented into smaller operational zones or containment areas. The mower systematically progresses through these zones rather than moving randomly across the entire region, improving efficiency while maintaining complete coverage.
Solution Approach 2:
The operational containment zone dynamically changes size and position as the mower progresses through the work region. The system adapts the active working area based on coverage progress, optimizing productivity while ensuring the entire property is eventually covered.
Data Source
AI summary
Apparatus, systems, and methods for directing an autonomous robotic vehicle such as a lawn mower relative to a work region. In some embodiments, the vehicle travels in a random pattern within a travelling containment zone of a lesser size than the work region. The travelling containment zone may move or travel across the work region such that, over time, the travelling containment zone travels over most all of a working surface of the work region.