My suggestion is that your idea's stupid.
Or more that your posting is stupid. I mean, really, why be such an ass
about it?
Not all us Americans are fat... some are disabled and can't walk, so this
device could be quite useful. The problems are that you need a buried wire
or some means of guiding it, or an expensive differential GPS system. The
thing has got to know where it is, and you can't do it by dead reckoning.
Another problem is that the unit might get thrown away with the trash, or
that someone would steal it. Also, if a baby is lying on the ground in
front if it, and its litigious mother is nearby watching, are you confident
you'll remain financially solvent? All these are common problems to robots
you send away on errands and expect to come back.
You could hack the brains out of one of those robotic lawn mowers. I don't
recall them needing buried wire. Likewise a radar sensor could deal with
unexpected obstructions. Even machine vision would work. Since it's
following a regular track it'd be simple comparison against a known-clear
path, not actual pattern recognition.
Dealing with someone stealing it isn't technological, but some sort of "I'm
too far from my base station, scream like a banshee" feature might be
entertaining. Heh, have it scream "help, help, I've been stolen from..."
and start frantically running it's drive wheels.
Hmmm, if they're cheap enough one of those robo-mowers might indeed be a
cool starting point. Teach it to traverse a fake lawn path and then hack it
onto something with enough drive motor horsepower to move the weight.
You could start the experiment by building the cart and using a radio
controlled car circuit to operate it manually. Prove that the drive
hardware works and then cobble up the brain for doing it automagically.
Hmm, an R/C car design using a gas motor and some sort of battery operated
starter would probably get around the rather hefty battery requirements that
moving several cans of trash might require.
-Bill Kearney
ooh Bear
