We are happy to announce the introduction of Intelligent Marking's robotic sports field painting robot!
This outstanding technology is now being use in Football fields accross USA and Europe, reducing enormously the efforts to mantain the turf markings with the highest accuracy thanks to a propietary navigation algorithm and having in its heart North's RTKite L1+L2 GNSS RTK Receiver, coupled with an SmaRTK RTK Base to ensure maximum stability on every condition.
The Intelligent One robot can be seen in operation on this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaMb-esJ75o
The RTKite, that weights just a few grams and SmaRTK integrated receivers can be ordered from: http://gnssrtkmodule.com/
Comments
Dear Chris, I totally agree with DJ.
It is very easy to see why when you add up setup and maintenance numbers, and specially if you multiply by several fields if you handle many.
By the way DJ, we also have L1-Only RTK (pro-level), in case that you can to trial what we do.
Cheers!
Chris,
anything burried in the ground is very old technology, which never worked fine.
Footbool industry is worth Billions $$$, so what makes business is high precision GPS navigation.
For my lawn mower rover I can use L1 RTK receiver, fine tuned by Internet received control data (CORS over the Internet).
It may take minutes to get the fix, since I don't need high precision to work for me.
I exactly resigned from buying lawn mower controlled by wire burried in the ground ( geofencing by wire)
since GPS is a user-friendly modern technology.
Dear Bernardo,
What do you think about buried RFID tags with directional receivers for mower navigation? Once over the field placing an RFID tag every meter or so, 5-10cm deep. Then train the mower. I'm sure you have thought about this and am interested in your thoughts.
-Chris
Dear DJ.
Indeed the case of Lawnmowers is one of those few case where we would recommend L1-Only RTK, that could be a low cost solution, benefitting from a locally installed base, ie. one installed on the rooftop of a city dealer. In this case the local representative can supply from a single receiver, corrections for all the customers on the radius, as the accuracy can reach up to Float without issue.
The main difference between L1-only RTK to L1+L2 RTK (besides price) is the time to fix that the L1-only has, that can reach to several minutes before a firm Fixed RTK position, VS a few seconds of a double-frequency receiver.
However, there are more options of course, but wires seems too expensive and cumbersome. Even Laser-based guidance would be way better, even if is now decades-old.
If you want, we can help you explore options for your R&D and find a solution that might be economical-enough and can do the trick to position as accurate as feasible.
When this developments are evaluated as bulk productions, the cost can get low in an important rate.
Looking forward to hear from you if you like. You can drop us a line at emea - at - northgps.com
Cheers!
@Bernardo,
your GPS robot for painting football fields is great technology
and pricing is ok for the dfootball industry.
In case of battery operated electric lawn mower I need to cut price of add-on like your GPS tracking and control.
I studied ionospheric error in case of L1 system in Australia and need to contain any risk, autonomous, GPS controlled lawn mower goes to some strange places to crash finally.
CORS station data feed in EU is generally not free and what is offered as CORS over the Internet service, is sent from +100km far station.
I need real-time high accuracy GPS control known from autonomous cars operated in California.
I don't know any budget solutions to avoid mobile or movable obstacles in outdoor.
What is offered for autonomous non-GPS lawn mowers today is underground buried electric wire, acting as fencing-by-wire, restricting access to non-mowing zones.
BTW
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21APw8x%5FphbmoB6U8&cid=37E...
Test RTKite.zip file is not downloadable
Dear DJ, to expand regarding the "no-Base" PPK or RTK, it actually means a CORS recording service to sample the RINEX files to be postprocessed afterwards.
The idea is good to simplify the process of gathering data from the nearest CORS base, but is for PPK.
If you need real-time positioning, I'm afraid that PPK (Post-Processed Kinematic) does not work, and depending on the accuracy that you'll need, and Price range, the the system should be RTK L1 or L1+L2 (we don't recommend L1 RTK though) or al least SBAS Corrected Base-Less L1+L2 systems, that may do the trick for application that are not so "millimetric".
Here is a comparison we did some time ago, where we trialed an RTK L1+L2 system along with an L1 Sbas receiver, with and without any Base correction. You'll see that for the X/Y coordinates, on both cases, if your ranges are around "decimetric" accuracy, the receivers would do fine without any base or rework.
Here is the link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgbgZjAq8ec3wx78PMf6YW5qAelP (I'm sorry the titles are in Spanish, but the graphics are self-evident)
Also on the file there is a datalog of 3D real-time navigation output of an RTK L1+L2 receiver, corrected from a free CORS station about 8km away, on dense uban area.
Cheers!
Dear DJ, great projects indeed!
We are working with integrators and companies of units with similar applications, and now with the new Heading receiver (with Double antenna) the navigation on irregular surfaces is very much improved. You can drop us a line to emea@northgps.com and we can discuss your projects to see ow can we help you.
If you visit the online integrator store, there are almost all the options commonly used already packaged:
http://gnssrtkmodule.com/
Looking forward to hear from you!
thank you,
I manage 2 projects where high precision GPS is required
Trolley Truck
and
GPS controlled LawnMover
Since lawn mover is operating alike your Robot, all I need is to cut GNSS pricing
So I hope to test real-time GPS correction as suggested in
GPS live correction data feed
Let me know your opinion on accuracy of such approach.
D J, very welcome!
Actually we only supply the GNSS Base and Rover (or in this case we call them Robot) and they manufacture the units. The joint R&D took us about half a year, but with some hundreds of units on the market, we are very happy with the results.
Drop them a line!
PS. We are working on a new line of profesional ready-made Surveying Fixed Wings and Multirotors. Cheers!
@Bernardo,
excellent, my congratulations on your success
let me test your Intelligent Marking's robotic sports field painting robot
one day