Good luck Braylon 🙂

ty eric — just 1 joystick — ardupilot mixes the output for you.

Thank you so much for all the information and write ups you’ve been doing on this project. It is a tremendous wealth of knowledge and your site was one of the first that really helped me find a love for robotics. I am glad to see the autonomous lawn mower has been coming along well.

I was actually trying to build my own autonomous lawn vehicle that traverses through a field for a school project, albeit with different functionality (instead of cutting grass it fertilizes it). One thing I’ve had no luck in is getting some kind of autonomous system set up and working. I have a GPS RTK system set up, and I’m receiving ECEF coordinates of my vehicle with around 2cm of accuracy, so I know where my vehicle is precisely at all times.

However, I’m unsure how to use these coordinates to have the robot go forwards in a straight line, and then back again, and then turn for another loop around. I see that you are using ArduPilot, but I was wondering what the fundamental approach is to this, so I can maybe code up a program on my own.

Specifically, here are my two questions:
(1) How would I get a map of the boundaries of field in terms of coordinates? I know I can have the user maybe take the vehicle along the edges of the field, and save the coordinate every second. So I have an array of coordinates representing the boundary of my field. However, how would I use this array to maybe create a function to check whether or not the vehicle is within the boundary at any given time? I know how to do this if I only have 4 points marking the boundary, but not for a boundary that might have curves and edges.

(2) How would I have the vehicle go in a straight line? How can I use the GPS information to do this? Would I need a magnetometer? I’m just so lost on this part so any guidance to point me in the right direction would be appreciated.

Thank you once again for all the stuff you’ve been putting out. Its a real help to newbies like me. Anyways, good luck and I hope to hear back soon!

Cheers from Jersey,
Aditya

How did the wheel encoders. Work out for you?

I have been making some progress again on this project after my recent marriage and starting my first job. I want to thank you again for all the knowledge you have shared on your platform; it is a great resource for me as I am starting to get into robotics.

I am creating a build similar to your rover 2 setup and would like to integrate obstacle avoidance (for an added safety feature after I build the initial prototype). I saw you had changed from the Pixhawk to the Kakute f7 flight controller during this project. I have found videos to educate me on how to integrate the sensors for Pixhawk controllers, but it appears that there is less information regarding the Kakute controller. Would you still recommend using the Kakute at this time with additional upgrades such as this in the future?

Also, I am very interested in the Intel Realsense Camera. Were you still planning out putting out a video about integrating that with one of these builds?

Again, thank you for all of the information you take the time to publish. I am excited to hear what you are working on next!

Hi Darren,

It’s great to hear from the land down under! Is it insufferably American that I can hardly consider a day complete without hearing Men at Work’s masterpiece?

If your base station is close to your rover, you should be able to get pretty close to 1cm with the ZED-F9P. Of course the antenna’s visibility to the sky will have a big impact. Apologies for not having a schematic, but on the The Taming of the u-blox ZED-F9P post I think you’ll find some info that will get you rolling. Also, have seen some solid ZED-F9P tutorials on YouTube recently.

Take care,

Roby