Senior Design Project

Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics

School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Pennsylvania

Team Members:  Melissa Clapper, Kristin Henningson, Marisa Irion

Advisor: Dr. Vijay Kumar

Objective

The goal of this project is to design a general robotic lawn maintenance device capable of navigating a yard of any given size or layout.  The device should require minimum initial setup for the user and be completely autonomous for subsequent uses.  Furthermore, the robot will be able to determine its position in the yard, enabling the user to program in specific points to be visited. 

In addition to building a functional machine able to perform the tasks described above, the product itself should also be marketable.  Ideally, the general concept could be sold to a company that could adapt it do any of a number of tasks, including watering or fertilizing.  Consequently, it should be aesthetically pleasing and reasonably priced to appeal to consumers, but cost efficient enough to manufacture to allow the supplier to make a profit.