Source reduction efforts have helped to keep waste generation rates under control. The state of the economy has a direct impact on consumption and waste generation. With the strong economic growth that has occurred throughout the 1990's, waste generation has continued to increase. Despite this, the total per capita waste generation has remained unchanged from 1997 to 1998. On-site yard waste co...

Remote and autonomous operation of robotic platforms is revolutionizing the way in which work is done and information is gathered. Through the removal of the human element, costs decrease, quality of work increases, and continuous operation is achievable at little to no additional cost. Remote control offers almost all individuals regardless of physical limitations the ability to operate machin...

Advancements in robotic technology are opening up the opportunity to integrate robot workers into the labor force to increase productivity and efficiency. However, removing control from human-workers for the sake of efficiency may create resistance from the human workers, preventing this technology from being successfully integrated into the workplace. We describe our ongoing work developing an...

The integration of solutions to small problems is nec essary to solve larger ones However this integration does not need the consensus of the entire robotics community Individual research groups can integrate the necessary pieces to build solutions for larger prob lems Community wide standardization may lead to research stagnation To address the issues of integra tion ve of the many research e ...

Robotic lawnmowers currently available in the market cover their assigned area using a random reflection navigation strategy. While this strategy has been widely accepted for autonomous vacuum cleaning systems, it poses quality problems in outdoor applications since a randomic crossing of the garden can lead to an uneven mowing. In this paper we propose a localization algorithm based on a modif...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration and the impact of carbon (C) cycling in urban soils are themes of increasing interest. A model was developed to investigate the potential of C sequestration in home lawns. The model contrasted gross C sequestered versus the hidden C costs (HCC) associated with typical lawn maintenance practices. The potential of SOC sequestration for U.S. home lawns was d...

Water shortage worldwide mandates minimum use of irrigation water with maximumefficiency and productivity in all agricultural crops, landscape plants and turf. The objective inthis experiment was to study the effect of two levels of evapotranspiration-based (ETc) droughtin combination with two levels of nanosilicon dioxide (SiO2; NanSi1=1 mM and NanSi=2 mM),two levels of digoxin (Dig1=0.25 mg.l...

The machine to be designed and developed with a view to resolve one ofthe irksome problems of this institute has been facing every year. This institute issurrounded by vast non- fertile land area of about 200 acres, which becomes widelyoccupied by numerous breads of bushes and shrubs during post-rainy season. Due tothis unwanted proliferation of such verdant institute gets abysmal look and that...