Abstract
The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background informa tion supplied by theinventors: “There is a great need to have robots assist in our daily lives. As technology advances it is nowenvisionable that robots can a nd will perform many of the mundane tasks and chores that we as humans routinely perform in our daily lives. Already used abundantly in manufacturing, the perso nal “bot” hasnot quite made it into our lives much past the Roomba® cleaner by iRobot®. There are multitudes ofapplications for a mobile robot, including but not limited to snow removal, transporter, ground aeration,plant watering, feedi ng and fertilizing, crop monitoring, corn de-tasseling, crop harvesting which mi ghtinclude picking beans, berries, apples, pears, grapes, etc., grounds securit y, weather reporting, livestocksurveillance and monitoring (for example, if an animal in the pasture is sick or injured the bot couldreport back to the farmer that there is a problem), debris cleanup and removal and a variety of othertas ks and chores now performed by humans. Thus, there is a need to have bots assist us in our dailylives. Furthermore, many of these functions require attaching a n accessory or implement to the robotto perform the task. Additionally, there h as been an increase in use of artificial intelligence, assisting usin many task s, and artificial intelligence is currently becoming integrated into many of the systems andmachines we use daily. This invention provides an easy, automatic m eans of engaging and disengagingthe accessory or implement to and from the grou nd utility robot that uses artificial intelligence to learnabout its environmen t, that will learn to recognize different accessories, that will learn how to co nnect anddisconnect a variety of accessories, that works in an unstructured env ironment and that ultimately does notrequire any human interface or assistance to perform these tasks, chores, connecting and disconnecting.”
NETL
NSTL