Hygrometers and heat sensors (sensors) would detect the temperature and the humidity to determine whether or not to water the lawn for an hour or not at all. The sprinkler heads (actuators) would then water for longer periods of time or none at all. The hotter and drier the weather is, the more it gets watered. If the weather is humid and rainy, the lawn will get watered for a short time or not at all.
A sprinkler system can cost 2-4 thousand dollars. The new sprinkler system will need to have a heat sensor and hygrometer modification, which would cost about 50 dollars. Labor cost won't cost much if the sprinkler system is being modified, which is about 5 dollars.
Great idea! Agriculture and irrigation applications are a huge opportunity for robots in the Midwest. Automating the watering of a lawn is a great idea. How about adding some intelligence to it - like having a robot figure out which portion of the land needs how much water. If we are talking about acres and hectares of agricultural land, this might be a costly problem for one robot..how about having a team of robots do the watering task, or better still, have an aerial robot do a fly-over everyday to take pictures of the ground and do some image processing to figure out how much water is needed on what part of the land. Then have ground robots move in, targeting the regions that need watering. This is likely to save hundreds of dollars everyday in saved water and energy costs, as well as help us get more environmentally friendly. The cost for the robots can be kept pretty low, around $3,000-5,000 for ground robots (that is low cost for robots) and $5,000-10,000 for the aerial robot
ReplyDeleteMy problem is how much time it takes too clean your whole home.My solution is a humanoid robot that can do it for you.It could do simple tasks such as dusting, vacumming, mopping, etc.)the sensors for this robot would be relatively the same as a human(sight,smell,hearing,touch,and taste).The actuators would also be the same as a human's(legs and arms).This "maidbot" would cost around 4500, including the sensors and the labor cost.
ReplyDeleteGood one. Some points to think are - what would be the advantage of a humanoid robot over the Roomba robotic vacuums we have now. Clearly reaching places beyond the floor is an advantage. But given the severe technological challenges (robots cannot tie shoe laces yet, not breaking stuff while dusting, mopping without a mess, etc.) and accessories required for the proposed "maid bot", $4,500 seems to be relatively optimistic.
Delete