Robotic lawn mowing boundary determination
AssigneeiRobot Corporation
InventorsBrian Yamauchi, Andrew Beaulieu, Paul C. Balutis
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of mowing an area with an autonomous mowing robot comprises storing, in non-transient memory of the robot, a set of geospatially referenced perimeter data corresponding to positions of the mowing robot as the mowing robot is guided about a perimeter of an area to be mowed, removing from the set of perimeter data one or more data points thereby creating a redacted data set and controlling the mowing robot to autonomously mow an area bounded by a boundary corresponding to the redacted data set, including altering direction of the mowing robot at or near a position corresponding to data in the redacted data set so as to redirect the robot back into the bounded area.
Claims8
A mowing robot comprising:
- a grass cutter;
- a drive system including a motorized wheel;
- and
- a controller operably coupled to the motorized wheel for maneuvering the mowing robot to traverse a lawn area, the controller configured to:
- determine whether the mowing robot is being guided in a forward or a backward direction,
- in a teaching mode, store in memory geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates corresponding to positions of the mowing robot during the teaching mode,
- suspend storage of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates in response to determining that the mowing robot is being guided in a backward direction,
- identify a boundary comprising at least some of the geospatially referenced perimeter coordinates stored during the teaching mode, and
- control the mowing robot to autonomously mow within an area bounded by the boundary.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.