Not-Sure-What-To-Call-This-Bot, or NSWTCTB, A dandelion killing 'bot

Hello all!,

 

I have been lurking around on this site for a while now, and I think it is great that we robotics geeks (gasp...Did I just say that? I mean Robotically Inclined Persons) can get together and post. Without further ado:

Our family detests dandilions. 

Our family also happens to live in Canada, where in the summer every square inch of our lawn is covered by dandilions.

This is not a good combination.

Introducing the NSWTCTB, a dandilion killing bot!

This Bot will eventually roam our lawn, searching for dandilions and spraying them with a vinegar and lemon juice mixture that appears to kill the weeds. A preplanned course will be stored into the eeprom of an Arduino Mega, which will navigate via the most accurate GPS I could find, the UP501 (An incredible 1.8 meter accuracy)  . A P4 motherboard running Roborealm ($50! Ouch!) and a webcam will take care of weed detection, sending serial commands to the Mega, which will then move accordingly. This is all mounted on a ride-on Hummer toy.

At the moment, the 'bot is little more than an Xbee controlled rc car, pending motherboard, slidy-thing for vinegar nozzle, roborealm, and a whole lot of coding.

Will update soon.

A pic of the entire bot: (sorry for the bad quality, taken with ipod camera), (not much going on yet);

A pic of the electronics:

That's all for now, folks!

Kills evil dandilions!


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/robots/show/not-sure-what-to-call-this-bot-or-nswtctb-a-dandelion-killing-bot