Three UF engineering students and a UF graduate will try to mow down their competition today.
The team’s GPS-guided lawn mower will compete in the seventh annual Institute of Navigation Robotic Lawn Mower Competition in Beavercreek, Ohio until Saturday.
Fifteen teams from the U.S. and Canada will try to cut at least 75 percent of a 150-square-meter lawn in the most “aesthetically pleasing” manner, according to the competition’s rulebook. First prize in the “basic” category, which the UF team entered, is $2,500.
Mike Franks, 30, Colin Watson, 21, Owen Allen, 25, and Andres Vargas, 23, have worked since January on the mower, which is intended to mow more accurately and time-efficiently than other self-propelled lawn mowers with the help from a GPS.
The system cost $15,000 and was borrowed from UF’s Center for Intelligent Machines and Robotics.
Franks, an electrical engineering senior, said the UF team’s machine mows on a preset path.
“[It] mows more like a person would mow a lawn,” Franks said.
