Divot Fixing Robot for Golf Courses

[Cat5Can]

Not in order

Aeration/scarification takes a fairly heavy duty machine (6" to 10" hollow tines removing cores of compacted soil) and it something that needs to be done very quickly if you are going to get out of a golfers way. We would normally do several greens and approaches in one day with dedicated equipment. Every tee would be done in less than a day. We also do several fairways a day. If the timing is going to be right for regrowth etc there is limited time for this. We do all of our August maintenance programme of this type in less than a week.

Two foot wide as ball collector - way to slow! Ours are about 15 foot wide and done at reasonable speed behind a vehicle. We already have the vehicles as would many others and the collection attachments do not cost a lot of money. You also have to consider weight. I do not know how many balls are collected in each tray but I am certainly not strong enough to pick up one the 3 trays on each each collector on my own.

Very Interesting thanks for this.

 

[Cat5Can]

There is a robot ball collector on the range at Bedfordshire golf club. It is not that big and looks like an oversized robot lawn mower. It fills up and then trundles off to a sort of pit area to unload then off it goes again. How efficient it is I don’t know as I have only been once.

Hello there, will check this out thanks.

 

[Cat5Can]

Similar to Silvermere which has a couple that does the same thing. It is interesting to see it trundle round, avoiding the flags etc and then recognising the ball and effectively driving over it to scoop it up but after a while I forget it is there and when I do look back it is usually nowhere near where I last saw it and it has trundled a fair distance away although it never seems to go on what seems like a logical route to me

Great thanks for this information

 

[Cat5Can]

I think the idea in theory is great, but in implementation I don’t think its fully cooked or even feasible.

Firstly, I’d look to dial it back a bit, far too many people go off on a crusade with a new invention but get caught up in the process without going through the appropriate stage gates to make sure it’s even viable.

I feel there’s a level of market research required before you continue any further, it’s great that you can design bespoke software to analyse the ground and identify divots, construct a state-of-the-art robotic machine with cameras and sensors that can navigate all terrain, design a docking/refilling station but the costs to get this even into a prototyPE stage is going to be huge. Once you factor in development costs, overheads, marketing, components, construction, support and maintenance (to name but a few) what’s the margin your looking at to be even making a profit? Then you need to compare that V.s what the current costs are to maintain grounds annually and then consider the available capital of clubs and what % of that they would be happy to invest in a product like this (you’ll also need some sort of maintenance/servicing agreement covering the robot for mechanical failures/software updates).

I don’t want to be a joy-kill as I think it seems like a great idea but I think you are trying to run before you can even crawl (I could be wrong here and you might have already secured enough to cover all these costs from investors).

In the spirit of not coming across totally negative;-
For some reason I feel the divot identification technology would be well placed in a drone that is able to scan each hole/course from the air, when a divot is identified it would then be sent back and queued on the repair robot so it can effectively plan its route to maximise effectiveness and minimise downtime (refilling/recharging) food for thought, as someone who already works in the industry my advice would be utilise as much existing technology as possible because someone else has already taken the hit on design and development, additionally there are a lot of funding bodies to support SMEs which could help with initial cash flow (check out innovate UK for example).

Good luck with your endeavour.

Wow, thanks for this thoughtful response. We agree completely we need to make sure this will actually add more value than the current solution available to golf courses before we spend our time and money developing this..

Using a drone to pre-scan the course for Divots could help the robots efficiency significantly.

Many thanks

 

[Grant85]

I think the idea has some merit.

Problem I would forsee is such a robot would have to be pretty large to carry a decent amount of material, would need quite a bit of battery power and would either have to cover a lot of ground around a large property or be driven from hole to hole.

I'm guessing it would be really difficult to make something cost effective that would sort something that is not a huge problem for courses who have the budget to fill their divots.

 

[Cat5Can]

I think the idea has some merit.

Problem I would forsee is such a robot would have to be pretty large to carry a decent amount of material, would need quite a bit of battery power and would either have to cover a lot of ground around a large property or be driven from hole to hole.

I'm guessing it would be really difficult to make something cost effective that would sort something that is not a huge problem for courses who have the budget to fill their divots.

Hello thanks for your reply.

Yes, that is correct the payload will be heavy.

Its all boils down to cost

Thanks

 

[Grant85]

Hello thanks for your reply.

Yes, that is correct the payload will be heavy.

Its all boils down to cost

Thanks

suggestion would be to try and develop something that can do multiple things.

For example, a tee box robot. greenkeeper places robot on a tee box, lifts the tee markers and robot goes around cutting the tee and filling divots. Meanwhile greenkeeper moves to adjacent green and prepares the green and bunkers as normal.

I'm sure sensors could be laid into the ground to mark out the tee boxes and perhaps the user could also mark out anywhere for grass dumping near each tee box and the robot could alternate between various sites each day.

Other issue is I don't know what machinery most clubs use. Some clubs might use their fairway mower on their tees? Some might have a stand alone piece of equipment? Many clubs tee boxes are the least accessible part, up stairs etc. so I'd guess a lot of these will be hand cut, while others can be ridden over by a larger machine.

 

[Cat5Can]

suggestion would be to try and develop something that can do multiple things.

For example, a tee box robot. greenkeeper places robot on a tee box, lifts the tee markers and robot goes around cutting the tee and filling divots. Meanwhile greenkeeper moves to adjacent green and prepares the green and bunkers as normal.

I'm sure sensors could be laid into the ground to mark out the tee boxes and perhaps the user could also mark out anywhere for grass dumping near each tee box and the robot could alternate between various sites each day.

Other issue is I don't know what machinery most clubs use. Some clubs might use their fairway mower on their tees? Some might have a stand alone piece of equipment? Many clubs tee boxes are the least accessible part, up stairs etc. so I'd guess a lot of these will be hand cut, while others can be ridden over by a larger machine.

Yes were have been thinking we might need to add a second use case for the robot.

Thanks for getting back to me

 

[Cat5Can]

Thanks