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CallMeInfinitay t1_jbrvjcu wrote

> single error fatality risk, unlimited chaotic cities, 90mph compute time limits, make self driving cars unfeasible compared to multitask garden robot

I was on-board with the project until I saw the robot with a saw/trimmer attachment

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MegavirusOfDoom t1_jbrx1gr wrote

Thanks for the tip. I'll take it off the list. Often, thorny bushes can invade a field and they are so thorny (i.e. wild prunus trees), it's fairly difficult to work on as a human, so that's what I was thinking of when I put the rotary blade on it. Probably not necessary indeed.

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rainbow3 t1_jbs4qxw wrote

I have used several robot mowers. Even a single application has many unknowns and a lot of the solutions are mechanical rather than ai.

  • Rabbit holes are an issue. Some get stuck in them or worse spin their wheels. others reverse out.
  • They often cut their own border wire, typically when rabbits dig it up.
  • All robots can climb hills but some draw arcs when entering a hill at an angle.
  • There are lots of obstacles...wire that tangles the blades, toys, clothes, small children, fallen fruit...

There are robots already for mowing, weeding, gutter cleaning. However each task has very different mechanical requirements so combining weeding with pressure washing would require huge compromises.

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currentscurrents t1_jbs5lnn wrote

Robot control is fundamentally a reinforcement learning problem, and that subfield hasn't had the same breakthroughs as self-supervised learning.

This may be changing though - the current state-of-the-art can use self-supervised learning to build a world model, and then run RL inside that world model instead of on the raw input data.

They claim 100x better sample efficiency than traditional model-free RL. Definitely an area of research to watch.

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rainbow3 t1_jbsugc8 wrote

Lawn robots work inside a border wire. They change direction randomly at the border. No machine learning but in practice it works really well. You can over think things.

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MegavirusOfDoom t1_jbs8pvx wrote

Woah sounds cool! if there's rabbit holes in the lawn, then it's a field! This robot has 14-inch wheels for toys and fruit, object detection, and some pincers to take toys and new plastic objects away from it's work zone.

It doesn't have a border wire, it's using ultrasound pings, the same technology that drones use to fly in groups. It's also rather tall with multiple cameras at the top.

The car washing option is just a rinse for salt and hubs, a bit like an intense rain storm that hits sideways. So, worth implementing if it can?

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rainbow3 t1_jbsvc41 wrote

It is a bit like the daleks. Created by a mastermind but he forgot about stairs. Tall with cameras will get stuck under low hanging fruit trees. Ultrasound fine for walls but flower beds less so.

There is a lot of unknowns even for one application.

Another example..I had one with a rain sensor so it avoided cutting wet grass. Sounds good but if there are weeks of rain then the grass does not get cut until gets too long for the mower to cut.

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