Development and Comparative assessment of a Low Power Robotic Mower Using Internet of Things (IOT) against Conventional Electric Powered Mower

Obokhai Kess Asikhia^a, Lucky Michael Osite^b, and Augustine Edet Ben^a

ABSTRACT

The design and development of a low-power robotic lawn mower employed the user’s needs-centered approach to identify the need for a low-power robotic mower. The system comprised of three build phases: mechanical fabrication, building of electrical circuit, and software development, which involved programming using C and C++. The developed system was tested by comparing it with conventional electrical mowers on mapped-out dry and fresh fields under similar test conditions. The result of the assessment showed that the developed mower completed the dried and fresh fields under 348 and 306 seconds, while the conventional mower completed the same field under 127 and 78 seconds respectively. The effective capacity, speed of operation, cutting efficiency, and performance index of the robotic mower were recorded as 0.0086 and 0.010 m²/s, 0.0057 and 0.0049 m/s, 65 and 60%, and 0.47 and 0.50 under dried and fresh grasses, respectively. Meanwhile, the conventional mower showed operational speeds of 0.016 and 0.019 m/s, cutting efficiency of 95 and 90%, and performance indexes of 0.224 and 0.342 for dried and fresh grass conditions, respectively. The better performance of the conventional mower was a function of its higher input power of 1000 watts compared to the low power of 120 watts of the developed robotic mower.