International Journal of Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering IJMME-IJENS Vol:10 No:04 1 105204-9191 IJMME-IJENS © August 2010 IJENS I J E N S Abstract — This article presents a review of researches done on the subject of automated tractor. An autonomous tractor is a vehicle that can operate without or with minimal human control, self-propelled and guided automatically along a desired path. The benefits from such a system are useful for agriculture industry by reducing labor cost and time, as well as improving output efficiency by eliminating human errors. Many researches and inventions have been made, with the results ranging from successful, encouraging to some that are impractical for commercial implementation for certain reasons. These implements include sensor, global navigation satellite system, machine vision, laser triangulation, ultrasonic transmitter and geomagnetic controller, as well as actuator and servo motor. Index Term— Automated grass cutter, Proportional Integral Derivative (PID), Geomagnetic Direction Sensor (GDS), Mower. I. INT RODUCT ION Lawn mowing is an important part of the process to keep terrain with grass well-manicured and tidy. Places such as soccer field, garden, home lawn, golf course and many others require constant lawn mowing and grass cutting. One of the complicated tasks is mowing, with large amount of time and effort needed to complete it. Depending on geographical location and weather trends such as rainfall and temperature, it is generally necessary to move a lawn on a weekly basis. The duration to complete the task takes from minutes to hours, depending on the size of the particular lawn and the moving equipment available. The required long hours and the complicated job would make the operator to succumb to fatigue. It is a fact that humans have some physical limitations regarding environmental factors such as weather conditions, including temperature, pressure, humidity and so on which This work was supported in part by the University Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) towards working on UTeM funded project titled „engineering of mechanical control kit for unmanned grass cutter‟, Project number: PJP/2009/FKP(8A)-S536. Ir. Sivarao, Anand, Hambali, Minhat, are the academic members while Faizul is a lab technician at Faculty of Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM), Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, The correspondence author can be contacted via e-mail: kpe_siva@yahoo.com or sivarao@utem.edu.my). causes low blood pressure and poor fluid intake [1]. In committed situations, robots can do and should do the job for us. Robots are not only used in outer space, but, there are many places on earth where it is too dangerous for man to work at like in the deep sea, nuclear plants or waste dumps. Hence, there is also a growing need for robots in supporting human beings in their daily life at home or at work [2]. These are also reasons for the limited workforce available in this sector. The operation of a lawn is a skill and labor intensive task and furthermore the shortage and aging workforce in agriculture results in a decrease of skilled machine operators. Therefore, the development of driverless lawn tractor is of commercial significance and societal importance. There has been a need for some time for a lawn tractor that is truly automatic. Although many types of automatic lawn mowers have been proposed in the past, none have met with any real degree of commercial success [3]. One of the reasons being that the proposed systems cost too much, that many small landscaping operators would not be able to afford. For those in developing countries where the cost of labor is low, the investment against return would not be favorable. Besides that, systems that apply technology such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and motion-sensor are too sophisticated for any ordinary employee to operate. This paper reviews the previous inventions done by other researchers in finding the various automated tractors and the newly proposed cost effective method for the simple and useful automated tractor. II. REVIEW OF PREVIOUS WORK Conventional tractors are manual driven, where a driver is required to maneuver the direction of the tractor on the desired course. For activities such as in agriculture seed planting or regular grass cutting process, the path traveled by the tractor is mostly fixed in a certain pattern predetermined by the driver or operator. Therefore, the criteria to develop an autonomous tractor has the primary requirement that the tractor be guided to travel on a desired path with minimal human intervention. With the development of technology, many scientists and researchers have studied, designed, or invented various autonomous vehicles which can self-propelled and guided automatically while human only have to monitor or control through some remote means. Review of Automated Machines towards Devising A New Approach in Developing Semi-Automated Grass Cutter Sivarao, T.J.S.Anand, Hambali, Minhat, Faizul