Student develops new robotic lawn-mowing technology

Along with doing the laundry and taking out the trash, mowing the lawn is an inescapable chore of everyday life (at least for anyone with a yard in the summer). Sweltering heat, pesky bugs and lack of time are a few barriers that might deter someone from venturing outside to cut the grass, but technology that will make it possible to circumvent the whole job is nearly finished at the Coordinated Science Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Junho Yang, 32, a PhD candidate at UIUC in mechanical science and engineering, alongside Professor Soon-Jo Chung (Aero Engineering), Professor Seth Hutchinson (ECE) and agriculture implement manufacturer John Deere, is working on “an omnidirectional-vision-based system to detect the containment status of a robotic lawn mower.” John Deere is funding the project.

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