Early robots were mainly used in factories to replace humans in handling some heavy and repetitive tasks. Nowadays, with the advancement of technology and the reduction of cost, robotics technology has gradually entered the homes of ordinary people. For example, lawn mower robots and sweeping robots have become current hot-selling products, assisting people with some repetitive housework tasks.

Common mowing robots and sweeping robots are classified as Automated Guided Vehicle Robots (AGV Robots), which have the functions of automatically finding paths and autonomously moving to perform tasks. Its main components include radar, motor, and control. It is composed of various components such as infrared sensor, various sensors (infrared, distance, collision, drop...), power supply and other components. Of course, the software part combines with the intelligent AI function to independently determine the range of weeding/sweeping, avoiding obstacles, returning to charging, etc., Let this robot, which can automatically guide and handle housework, become the new darling of the family. Regarding the application of AGV robots, there are already many related products on the market.

Mowing the lawn is a tedious job that has to be done all year round. The mowing robot can move autonomously in the lawn or garden and cut the grass perfectly, replacing the tedious work of human labor. The solution introduced by ST includes a variety of high-performance STM32 microcontrollers, power MOSFETs, gate drivers and integrated motor drivers, as well as a series of hardware and software evaluation and development tools to help design various types of high-efficiency motors Control solutions, and motors used to move the wheels and cutting blades of the lawn mower robot (for example, three-phase brushless and brushed DC).

In addition, ST also has a series of AC-DC and DC-DC power conversion and battery charging solutions, as well as a wide range of environmental, motion and proximity sensor product portfolios, which are very suitable for the development of smarter lawn mowing robots. Take the lawn mower robot designed by Integra Sources as an example, using ST STM32F4 series MCU with Cortex-M4 core, and FreeRTOS for firmware development, Microsoft Visual Studio with Visual GDB plug-in using C/C++ for firmware implementation, Using Altium Designer IDE for schematic and PCB design, using CMOS sensor (camera) with DVP bus, the device can be connected to the cloud (server) using WiFi or 3G connection, Its first prototype also has a wireless module for communicating with the base station, and an LCD with a touch screen for GUI. For precise positioning, GPS, accelerometer, gyroscope, compass (magnetometer) and computer vision algorithms are used.

This lawn mower robot has a graphical interface, it only takes one hour to charge, and has an intelligent autonomous workflow, can perform condition monitoring and event alarms, it also has an object detection function, and can use computer vision algorithms to identify grass and its color. A multi-sensor system consisting of accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer and GPS is used to detect the position of the lawn mower and recharge itself when the battery is exhausted.