
The Roomba for Lawns Is Really Pissing Off Astronomers - digital55
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/irobot-lawnbot/
======
wpietri
I have pal who did sysadmin work for a radio telescope; they went to amazing
lengths to avoid interference. The details escape me now (hopefully some of
those folks will chime in with their stories), but I remember being impressed
about how thoughtful and serious they were. So between the radio astronomers
and corporate lawyers, I'm inclined to believe the astronomers.

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josefresco
I'm all for robotics, but the thought of an unattended machine whirling around
my yard with spinning blades (of death) worries me. Granted, my "lawn guy"
races around my yard already like a NASCAR driver on crack, but part of me
wonders what sort of mishaps this robotic vacuum might get itself into. Small
animals, toys, sprinkler heads etc.

It's one thing if your vacuum sucks up a kid's toy, or harasses your cat.
Imagine the potential liability if your robotic lawn mower left your yard and
entered your neighbors.

~~~
ptaipale
Stiga has been making robot mowers for quite a while, and I haven't heard of
drunken Swedes who would have been hacked to death by their mowers after
passing out on their lawn.

Apparently animals will run away and sprinkler heads can be marked with
perimeter wire so that the gadget avoids them.

[http://www.stiga.com/products/stiga_en/robot-
mowers.html](http://www.stiga.com/products/stiga_en/robot-mowers.html)

~~~
josefresco
I have sprinkler heads all over my lawn, if the lawn mower avoided them I'd
have patches of long grass. My sprinkler heads will routinely get stuck in the
"up" position due to sand/dirt that gets stuck in the sliding mechanism.

This actually seems solvable by robotics, but it's not a viable solution for
beacons or markers as they are meant to be "passed over" by lawn mowers.

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jfabre
Am I the only one who thinks that iRobot is actually doing a very poor job
with the Roomba cleaning algorithm?

Why can't we have a robot that maps the surface and then cleans accordingly? I
always get irritated when I look at my Roomba doing it's job.

~~~
akramhussein
Check out the upcoming Dyson 360 Eye -
[http://www.dyson360eye.com/](http://www.dyson360eye.com/)

Disclaimer: I worked on it.

Edit: To answer your question directly, you have 3 choices:

1\. Don't map (or somewhat guess it) - Roomba.

2\. Map first, then clean - Neato.

3\. Map as you clean - Dyson 360 Eye.

This is obviously a crude explanation but they get harder going down the list.
If you are interested to know more, read up on SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation
and Mapping) algorithms.

~~~
robterrell
How is it better than Roomba and Neato -- what's the cleaning algorithm? Does
it map the space? etc.

Edit: thanks, you answered while I was asking. That's a very interesting use
case for SLAM. Does it re-map every use (i.e. today there's toys on the floor,
but tomorrow there's not)? Does it store the point cloud or convert it to
something more manageable? Are you licensing someone's SLAM library or did you
roll your own?

~~~
akramhussein
Unfortunately I'm not really able to go in to much more details, but this
video explains what's public knowledge -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oguKCHP7jNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oguKCHP7jNQ)

Sorry!

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briandear
Wow. That article took 8 paragraphs or so before it explained the issue that
was irritating astronomers. Terrible writing.

~~~
veidr
Yep, completely contrary to everything I learned in journalism school.

TL;DR (from the seventh and _last_ paragraph) — "The frequency band proposed
for the lawnbot (6240-6740 MHz) is the very same one several enormous radio
telescopes operate on."

~~~
smhg
Depends on the goal I guess. What you might have been taught: inform your
readers.

The writer's goal/task was probably something like "create content" in the
broad sense.

My personal opinion: please keep doing what you learned in journalism school
:)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _The writer 's goal/task was probably something like "create content" in the
> broad sense._

Yeah, in the so-called "content marketing" sense of the word, i.e. create
whatever random stuff that will get people interested enough that we can
monetize them (or get paid by whoever hired us to do the content marketing).

Source: I interact personally with content marketers on a daily basis.

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wppick
Can we just get rid of grass lawns already... replace it with something that
looks good and doesn't need water and weekly cutting

~~~
at-fates-hands
Not sure if this was sarcasm or not, but having a lot of landscaping
architecture friends it's an interesting idea.

In places where grass is hard to grow (Southwestern US) you see a lot of rock
varieties and other materials that they substitute for grass and it looks
great.

Just Google, "las vegas yards" and look at the image search.

The last place I lived, my neighbor was tired of his grass in his bakyard
(about a 1/4 acre) so he created a huge concrete terrace in his back yard,
along with a large rubber hard court for basketball and other activities for
his and the neighborhood kids. He still kept his small front yard grass, but
the entire backyard was now completely utilitarian.

~~~
rmxt
Yay for (sub?)urban heat island growth! :(

Not sure where the last place you lived was, but I hope that if it were the
desert, that there's some sort of aesthetically pleasing option that exists
between a water hungry green grass lawn, and an asphalt or impervious concrete
surface. Even if it's not the desert, permeable paving sounds like a win-win
solution for aesthetics, functionality, and environmental impact.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeable_paving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permeable_paving)

~~~
at-fates-hands
It was in North Dakota, and I wonder if this is what he was using. I remember
him going on and on about how environmentally friendly these pavers were and
how they could filter water and last a longer than normal concrete pavers have
have virtually no maintenance costs.

Either way, it looked really nice and had me thinking about the maintenance
and costs of my yard.

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kalleboo
Husqvarna have been making robotic lawnmowers since 1995, do they work
differently? [http://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-
mowers/husqvarn...](http://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-
mowers/husqvarna-robotic-mowers-for-homeowners/)

~~~
seszett
As the article says, you have to bury wire along the perimeter that is to be
mowed by the robot, that's how it recognizes its limits.

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ohashi
So why can't they just use a different frequency?

~~~
cevanwells
Exactly. What makes the 6Ghz spectrum so attractive to iRobot? If they are
asking the FCC for an exception anyway, isn't there another frequency they
could use with the same method of location finding?

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userbinator
I'm not sure why they're so obstinate about using a very-high-frequency band
of RF for this. Is GPS not accurate enough? How about a more mechanical
method, or near-field communications?

 _the only way to get them to work is to dig a trench along the perimeter of a
lawn and install a wire that creates the electronic fence needed to ensure the
automaton don’t wander beyond the property line._

If they really want to implement that method, shopping cart locking systems
have done it before, and they don't need 6GHz+ RF:

[http://www.wired.com/2007/07/hack-remote-
sho/](http://www.wired.com/2007/07/hack-remote-sho/)

~~~
pjc50
GPS accuracy on its own is nowhere near good enough. _Differential_ GPS can
give you 1cm accuracy: [http://www.blackroc-
technology.com/technologies/gnss/dgps/](http://www.blackroc-
technology.com/technologies/gnss/dgps/)

~~~
0xffff2
It seems like installing the base station for differential GPS would be
_easier_ than installing the electronic fencing descried in the article.

~~~
oh_sigh
Easier, maybe? But it would cost tens of thousands of dollars and be subject
to even more regulations, so I don't think that is a good solution.

~~~
0xffff2
Why would it be subject to more regulations? You just need two GPS receivers
and a way to link them (e.g. WiFi).

~~~
oh_sigh
Sorry, but I don't think you know how differential GPS works. It is not just
using two GPS devices and averaging their location. Wikipedia is a good place
to start:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_GPS)

------
JoeAltmaier
It comes down to some engineer choosing a certain chip and antennae. iRobot,
come on, choose a different vendor and end this silliness.

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drzaiusapelord
The "internet of things" is just going to make this worse and there's really
no fighting it. My question is considering how many billions are pissed away
tossing men and women into the ISS for reasons not apparent to me, why don't
we have a radio telescope on the far side of the moon yet? I keep hearing
about all these manned missions, COTS money handed to SpaceX, etc but the one
thing that would be a gamechanger for radio astronony is not even on anyone's
radar.

I'd love to see the next POTUS make this a priority. Yeah, Orion and the SLS
are impressive, but they're mostly fighting yesterday's battles - pretty much
a souped up Apollo for similar big feel-good missions where men and women go
into LEO/moon/asteroids/maybe-mars for a very short time and fly right back.
Why can't we also fund a farside telescope that could work for decades 24/7
providing space science advantages we simply cannot get any other way?

~~~
g-clef
The moon is a pretty bad place for any long-term base...lunar dust is really
hard on equipment. The l4/l5 points, though, are very interesting and there's
a bunch of projects putting probes at the various l4/l5 points in the solar
system.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_p...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_objects_at_Lagrangian_points)

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Perhaps I wasn't clear. This would be an unmanned telescope. We're talking a
one time landing of a piece of equipment. Dust will be a non-issue after the
initial landing.

~~~
g-clef
Not necessarily. One of the interesting results from LADEE was that the
measured lunar dust increased a few hours _before_ the probe landed
(attributed possibly to the geminid meteor shower). There's lots of stuff that
can kick dust off the lunar surface.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Atmosphere_and_Dust_Envir...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Atmosphere_and_Dust_Environment_Explorer#Preliminary_results)

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jiballer
I'm curious why it needs beacons when we have things like self-driving cars
and machine learning? Is it just a matter of cost?

~~~
sp332
Self-driving cars barely exist as prototypes. It's not production-ready tech.

~~~
chc
Don't Tesla already have their autopilot tech released?

~~~
robterrell
It doesn't steer. It augments the cruise control, accelerating and
decelerating in stop-and-go traffic (see
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcwObeGB_mU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcwObeGB_mU)).
Which isn't nothing, but it's not driving you to work.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I've heard them claiming that it could indeed drive you from home to work
using public roads and that it is capable of finding you and driving the car
to you when you call for it (aka. "Batmobile mode").

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kstenerud
Why don't they just use the WIFI spectrum?

Have legitimate messages so that it doesn't mess up existing systems, and send
periodic pings whose radio signals the lawnmower can track. As an added bonus,
you'd have a full communications network to talk to it with.

~~~
gee_totes
How will the lawnmower know where it is with just WiFi?

~~~
kstenerud
The same way it would know where it is with the 6240-6740 MHz beacons.

~~~
oh_sigh
The beacons probably output a continuous wave of a certain amplitude at that
frequency. This would be classed as interference on at least the wifi
spectrums so it is not allowed.

~~~
kstenerud
That's why you send actual 802.11 messages instead of a continuous wave.

~~~
oh_sigh
And how do you determine your location based on an 802.11 message?

~~~
kstenerud
The same way you determine a location based on any regularly occurring radio
signal (in fact, the same way they propose to determine location in their
requested spectrum). The only reason to encode a proper 802.11 message would
be so as not to interfere with other devices in range.

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grandalf
It's nice that RFI is being taken seriously. In many, many cases it is not:
Noisy utility transformers, plasma TVs, poorly designed wall-wart supplies,
touch lamps, and broadband over power lines, just to mention a few troublesome
sources.

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thaumasiotes
> In a later response, iRobot added that NRAO observatories usually are
> surrounded by desert or forests, not environments where residential lawn
> equipment is used—a claim the NRAO called “silly.”

I don't get what's silly about this. Astronomers are already well known for
hating nearby human residences, because they give off visible light that makes
it difficult to see the sky. Radio communications are the exact same thing at
a different frequency.

But we've got a strong system going of "astronomers can suck it, and if they
want to look at the sky without our light getting in the way they can live up
on a remote mountaintop where nobody else ever goes". And that's what they do,
because imagine if someone could build a telescope near your house and then
get laws passed saying you were prohibited from using electric lighting...
ever. We like being able to see at night. Maybe we also like having automatic
lawn maintenance. Why should astronomers get to stop us?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Because RF spectrum is big and there is really nothing forcing iRobot to use
the same band radio astronomers need (who need that particular band because
physics) - they're probably either too lazy to pick a different radio chip for
their product or looking for a clever way to avoid the good solutions we have
since like 70s, so they could patent something here.

~~~
merrua
iRobot really should use a different frequency. Radio Telescopes should have
the prior claim and are more useful and valuable.

------
Qworg
I was wondering when this would come up. I led a team building autonomous
lawnmowers for a major outdoor power equipment company.

To answer some questions:

Autonomous lawnmowers are remarkably safe - far safer than standard lawnmowers
by a wide margin.

iRobot's potential solution isn't a new one by any means - but the requirement
of getting FCC approval for transmission is a rough requirement to overcome.

GPS isn't sufficient and DGPS can't fix multipath problems. Bosch's lawnmower
had GPS "straight line" algorithms in it and it had to be pulled because it
was destroying people's lawns.

Decawave is an interesting technology, but not what they're using.

Fully autonomous lawnmowers have been around since the 1950's and haven't
changed overmuch:
[http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/tg2i5rpfzmy0yj.jpg](http://file.vintageadbrowser.com/tg2i5rpfzmy0yj.jpg)

------
tzs
iRobot's waiver request:
[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001028220](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001028220)

NRAO comment on waiver request:
[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001039394](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001039394)

iRobot reply to comment:
[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001041441](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001041441)

NRAO reply to reply to comment:
[http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001042025](http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001042025)

I see nothing in the iRobot filings that indicate why they cannot operate in
the 5.725-5.875 GHz ISM band. Their system is based on simple time of flight
measurements of the signal, and that should work just as well at 5.7-5.9 GHz
as it would at 6.2-6.7 GHz.

------
mhb
It would be nice to crack down on the lawnmower and, especially, leaf blower
emissions in the 40Hz - 10KHz band. Where's the outrage?

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hellweaver666
Why can't we just manually "walk" the mower around the border so it knows
where it's boundries are?

~~~
detaro
Because the hard part is figuring out where it actually is relative to these
borders when it runs around later. If the border is actively detectable
(beacons, buried wire, ...) that becomes easier.

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rebootthesystem
I don't think lawn bots will take off. I live in a nice neighborhood. I am
100% certain that a $500 to $3,000 lawn bot would be stolen within a month.

Also, it is far cheaper and more efficient to pay a gardener for lawn
maintenance. They take care of far more than just mowing the lawn.

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kleinsch
Not an expert, but isn't this the exact problem Bluetooth LE was designed to
solve?

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eru
They even refrained from the clickbait of mentioning methanol in the headline:

"... pissing off astronomers looking for a drink"

------
mrfusion
Would GPS augmentation not work for this case? Don't airport runways use a
system like that?

------
uptown
Is this the same technology used by invisible fences intended to contain dogs
in a yard?

~~~
cpwright
Yes, but they are arguing that using the invisible fence wire is too
costly/difficult for a lawnmower. I can see that argument. A basic consumer
lawnmower is probably $200-600 right now. An installed pet fence is quite a
bit more.

Also, installing a pet fence, e.g. across driveways and paths can involve
asphalt/concrete cutting, and a bunch of trenching. That is the kind of thing
that even if you're willing to pay may have you say that it is just not worth
it, compared to sticking some stakes in the ground.

The market is interesting here; you have to have someone who will spend enough
on a fancy lawnmower, but not so much that they would outsource it to a
landscaper.

