Ticks are a health hazard to humans and pets alike. Yet few spray pesticides indiscriminately in tick-infested areas, primarily out of concerns over environment and cost. Justin Woulfe and his fellow students at the Virginia Military Institute came up with a novel solution. They hacked an RC truck,
I suspect a problem with having it run 3 months at a time, but seeing that at this point you are just estimating and with a collection rate of more than 80% of ticks in the perimeter, I suspect letting the attraction cycle run longer to attract more ticks would do the trick. Smart application of fuzzy logic, too. Where did you get the idea?
To clarify a few points, the Tick Rover succesfully collected 96% of the ticks during a test at Old Dominion University. The robot wouldn’t run for three months at a time, the three months is just a window during which two stages of the tick life cycle are active. Actual running time would be bout a day per site. Check out the IEEE Potentials article for a more in depth analysis, or contact one of us for more info thru the ECE dept at VMI. The research project originated from a request from Dr. Dan Sonenshine at ODU to develop a way to collect ticks without having grad students dragging the sheet. We simply brainstormed and designed from the concept. Future work includes building a shed in which the robot can be recharged, cleaned, etc. all autonomously which will include way to keep track of the tick density per site.
I caught Lyme disease last summer and have been hoping someone will invent a machine like the mosquito magnet to kill the ticks around my bed & breakfast. I sincerely hope some business will have the sense to purchase this idea and commercialize it. I would like one!
Great idea. If you can implement it without placing a tube all around your lawn that emits chemoattractant, you’ll be all set. Perhaps the little bot can perform both functions - emit the atrractant on first path, collect on the second, or do both simultaneously.
The alternative to bot following a tube can be placement of corner beacons throughout the property, and manually setting the bot’s path on the initial run - just the way you’d drive the toy truck from point to point.
now I can see the maker the Roomba coming up with a lawn version copycat…a small propane cartridge and a robot that will slowing cover the entire lawn automatically
If you really need to get rid of ticks on a permanent basis and can’t get your hands on one of these nice robots then try guinea:
http://www.guineafowl.com/fritsfarm/guineas/
they are smaller than chickens and really noisy, but do the trick of tick elimination quite well.
