Project background
Owners of conventional ride-on and zero-turn mowers wanted autonomy without replacing their equipment. The client tasked us with designing a retrofit kit capable of converting existing mowers into self-driving units.
Challenge
Mowers vary widely in controls, hydraulics, and electrical systems, so the kit had to abstract over those differences. Safety — obstacle detection, fail-safe braking, geofencing — was paramount, and the kit had to be installable in the field by technicians rather than engineers.
Approach & solution
We designed a modular kit with a standardized interface harness, a vision-plus-GNSS perception stack, and an electronic actuation layer for steering, throttle, and blade control. Safety is enforced at multiple layers, including a hardware e-stop independent of the compute unit. A commissioning app walks technicians through per-machine calibration.
Results & benefits
The retrofit kit converted several mower models successfully in pilot installations, operating autonomously on real properties. The modular design cut installation time significantly after the first few deployments.
