Design Brief
| Client Company | Home improvement companies (Home Depot, Ace Hardware), Consumer electronics companies (Best Buy) | |
| Target End-User | Homeowners with gardens | |
| Designers | Zhiyuan (Thomas) Li, Joshua Tang | |
| Problem Statement | According to a study by Sin-Ae Park and Candice A. Shoemaker in 2009, almost 60% of participants reported that they regularly experienced low and moderate pain in the lower back from gardening. They attributed this to bending down during gardening to perform tasks like pulling weeds. This can last for weeks, months, and even years of chronic back pain from gardening, further hampering other daily actions they may want to do | |
| Design Statement | Design a robot that is able to maneuver around a garden or lawn, analyzing plants and killing weeds using artificial intelligence recognition technology, also known as machine vision. The robot will kill weeds by uprooting the plants and storing them for the user to throw away at a later time | |
| Design Criteria | Costs $300-400 to produce, made in about 8 months, pulls out weed, doesn’t just kill leaves | |
| Design Constraints | Relatively Affordable (Similar products currently cost $350), small enough to not trample plants, sequires minimal oversight | |
| Comments | Shouldn't be an eyesore |