Re: Trash-Bot

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney99@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > My suggestion is that your idea's stupid.

Or more that your posting is stupid.  I mean, really, why be such an ass
about it?

> Not all us Americans are fat...  some are disabled and can't walk, so this
> device could be quite useful.  The problems are that you need a buried
wire
> or some means of guiding it, or an expensive differential GPS system.  The
> thing has got to know where it is, and you can't do it by dead reckoning.
> Another problem is that the unit might get thrown away with the trash, or
> that someone would steal it.  Also, if a baby is lying on the ground in
> front if it, and its litigious mother is nearby watching, are you
confident
> you'll remain financially solvent?  All these are common problems to
robots
> you send away on errands and expect to come back.

You could hack the brains out of one of those robotic lawn mowers.  I don't
recall them needing buried wire.  Likewise a radar sensor could deal with
unexpected obstructions.  Even machine vision would work. Since it's
following a regular track it'd be simple comparison against a known-clear
path, not actual pattern recognition.

Dealing with someone stealing it isn't technological, but some sort of "I'm
too far from my base station, scream like a banshee" feature might be
entertaining.  Heh, have it scream "help, help, I've been stolen from..."
and start frantically running it's drive wheels.

Hmmm, if they're cheap enough one of those robo-mowers might indeed be a
cool starting point.  Teach it to traverse a fake lawn path and then hack it
onto something with enough drive motor horsepower to move the weight.

You could start the experiment by building the cart and using a radio
controlled car circuit to operate it manually.  Prove that the drive
hardware works and then cobble up the brain for doing it automagically.
Hmm, an R/C car design using a gas motor and some sort of battery operated
starter would probably get around the rather hefty battery requirements that
moving several cans of trash might require.

-Bill Kearney