Robotic Lawn Mower?

ENTREPRENEUR SCOTT Jones was on his way toward joining the military-industrial complex, trying to create a robotic vehicle for the Pentagon. When that didn't work out, he took what he learned and began applying it to the creation of a robotic lawn mower.

Jones-the Hoosier technology maven behind

voice mail, homeentertainment supplier Escient and the new ChaCha.com Internet search engine-two years ago channeled a lot of energy and money into the creation of an autonomous, driverless, artificially intelligent vehicle. He souped up a Jeep Rubicon with computers, controllers and sensors, hoping to score well in the 2005 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grand Challenge, a robotic race through a tricky, 132mile desert course.

Only five teams completed the race-Jones' entry had a mishap with a concrete wall on a testing run before qualifications and never fully recovered.

No matter, though. Even before leaving for the 2005 competition in California, Jones declared that no matter how the race turned out, it would spark an Indiana company making use of the team's labors, and his IndyRobotics LLC did indeed continue steering down the path toward commercialized robotic navigation.

Last month, that venture gave birth to Precise Path Robotics, which is developing a line of self-guided mobile robots for professional and consumer "outdoor turf applications"-in other words, mowing the lawn.

Precise Path Robotics envisions a variety of robots that could take care of the turf at golf courses, ballparks and eventually homes. These are to be "autonomous robots," which means that they will function without human interaction, reacting to their environment through sensor information and guiding themselves as they move around and perform their task.

That's just what Jones' Jeep was doing two years ago on a makeshift course outside his Carmel mansion. Humans, of course, told it basically where it was supposed to go, but the robotic vehicle then took off on its own, using its sensors to detect obstacles and its computers to steer, accelerate and brake appropriately. Why not add a mower deck and tell it to head out and take care of the lawn?

The advantages are obvious. Golf courses and sports stadiums spend a small fortune paying live humans to tend the fairways and fields. Labor costs invariably increase, and the quality of the work is subject to human error. Put a robotic mower in charge and you'll end up with perfect turf every time, increased productivity with no complaints and no scheduling problems. It'll even be possible to have the robot mowers cut eye-catching patterns into the turf, just like at the ballpark today.

Needless to say, mowing a golf course is a much more complicated task than vacuuming a living room. These devices, therefore, will likely be much more sophisticated than the current robotic devices on the market, which use fairly simple sensors and follow an algorithm that sends them zigzagging across the room or the lawn until they've hit every square foot.

Don't cancel your lawn-mowing service, because you can't buy Precise Path products just yet. We'll have to wait a while before anything will be ready to hit the market, given where the company is in the product-development process. But before too long, Indiana will be at the cutting edge of grass cutting.

CLEARING THE FOG

One day soon you may be able to read this magazine in a steam room and use your reading glasses, too, thanks to the work of Purdue University researchers.

Materials engineers in West Lafayette have come up with a new kind of coating that may result in glasses that don't fog up-glasses that can even keep themselves clean. The coating is just a single molecule thick, made of polyethylene glycol molecules tipped with what's described a "Teflon-like" fluorine layer. Water can get through the layer, but larger oil molecules can't.

The new coating, for which its inventors are seeking patent protection, would basically cause dirt and skin oils and the grime from barbecue smoke to simply drop off of glasses-no need to clean or wipe off.

Cleanliness is just one benefit. "If glass is perfectly clean, it won't fog," Jeffrey Youngblood, an assistant professor of materials engineering, points out. The problem is, glass is rarely perfectly clean, because it's always picking up dirt from the air or other sources. The new coating will keep that from happening.

Youngblood became interested in developing this kind of material when he was skiing. He was wearing goggles that were coated with an antifogging substance, but knew that the substance did not work well if it came in contact with oils, such as the oils on fingerprints. "I accidentally got a fingerprint on this surface, and I started thinking, 'would it be possible to design a material that would work as an antifogging coating yet also resist finger grease?"'

As usually is the case with academic discoveries, this one is likely to take at least a few years before any commercialized product can hit the market. In the meantime, Youngblood and his fellow researchers will be working on additives to make window cleaners more effective.