Advice for building an automated gritting robot

Let's Make Robots Beginners
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hi

first post here. my mum and her neighbour arent the most able and struggle with gritting their paths. i thought it would be great if there was something like an outdoor roomba that would trundle along and grit paths when the temperature got too low. i thought i’d be able to buy something like this but it doesnt seem to exist. now ive started thinking about building my own, surely other people have the same issues with gritting? it wouldnt have to be that big, it’s not a large area and if it could climb stairs that would be a bonus. has anyone tried to build such a thing before? i dont know where to start with any of this for one that doesnt climb stairs nevermind this as well! i’m in the uk if that makes any difference. any advice or guidance would be grately appreciated.

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Hi @eastybeasty and welcome to our forum!

I’ve looked online, and I couldn’t find an already made solution for a gritting robot. I’ve found this article but not many details there:

What you could do is that you could buy an autonomous robotic vehicle, and then install gritting mechanism on it. Here are some autonomous vehicles that we sell:

But these are not cheap. Other option is to build everything on your own, but you would have to start from the beginning like designing the chassis with wheels, motors, drivers, then choosing the main control, adding sensors, programming it and so on. This would probably be cheaper solution but you need a lot of time and a lot of skills.

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For obstacle avoidance use ultrasonic sensors, LiDAR, or cameras.