The objective of the proposed research is to investigate, design and demonstrate a robotic lawn mower that uses GNSS and electronic compass as sensors for autopilot. The autopilot will allow the mower to navigate along a predetermined trajectory between waypoints, replacing thus the uneconomical random motion of the prior-art robotic mowers. The autopilot / controller will be based on ArduPilot platform. The software upload, the configuration of the controller, the calibration of the sensors and the definition of the autopilot trajectory will be achieved using the freeware graphical user interface (GUI) Mission Planner. The trajectory of the mower will be defined in Mission Planner using waypoints on a satellite map of the lawn.

The novelty of the proposed technology is the open-source approach, which achieves low cost and accessibility. It is also possible, that this may be the first demonstration of a robotic lawn mower that uses GNSS autopilot with predetermined programed trajectory. The benefit for this technology is represented by its economical procedure of achieving its tasks.