Commercial-grade Autonomous Mowers, Safety, and Dogfooding

Sense Think Act Podcast

In this episode, Audrow Nash speaks to Charles Brian Quinn (aka, CBQ), CEO and a Co–Founder of Greenzie. Greenzie make an autonomous driving system for commercial lawn mowers. We talk about Greenzie’s autonomous mowing system, how Greenzie has worked with manufacturers to up–fit their system into comercial mowers, how Greenzie does dog–fooding, safety and standards, and about CBQ’s experiences bootstrapping and with venture capital.
If you’re enjoying the podcast, please consider donating to help us keep it going:
https://donorbox.org/sense–think–act–podcast
EPISODE LINKS:
– CBQ’s website: https://www.seebq.com/}
– Greenzie’s website: https://www.greenzie.com/}
– Greenzie’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/Greenzie}
PODCAST INFO:
– Podcast website: https://sensethinkact.com}
– Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sense–think–act/id1582090036}
– Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/52wK4oMDvgijRk6E82tC5d}
– RSS: https://sensethinkact.com/itunes.xml}
– Full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/c/SenseThinkActPodcast}
– Clips: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChfnCpNwZzYtZ32J–pZvNDg}
OUTLINE:
– (0:00:00) Start
– (0:00:51) Introducing CBQ and Greenzie
– (0:02:40) Why go by initials?
– (0:03:22) Describing the Greenzie autonomous system
– (0:08:51) Working with mower manufacturers to up–fit their system
– (0:15:22) Software on autonomous system
– (0:21:21) Mapping the lawn
– (0:28:03) Handling poor GPS signal
– (0:33:28) Perception pipeline
– (0:38:58) Having a human use their mowers
– (0:45:15) Standards in the off–road space
– (0:50:18) The value of standards bodies
– (0:55:00) Depth cameras in the autonomous system
– (0:58:37) LIDAR and being venture backed
– (1:02:24) Replacing depth cameras with LIDAR? + Tesla and computer vision
– (1:03:50) Ruggedized computer
– (1:06:36) Microcontrollers, testing, and visualizing data
– (1:12:03) Deploying software updates
– (1:17:33) Safety
– (1:20:57) Testing for deployment + dogfooding
– (1:24:54) Training people to work with their autonomous system
– (1:29:54) Greenzie’s business model
– (1:35:13) Bootstrapping a startup versus venture capital
– (1:39:23) What CBQ learned from bootstrapping
– (1:47:38) Future of Greenzie
– (1:51:09) Advice to someone starting their career
– (1:54:02) Links and social media
SOCIAL:
– Twitter: https://twitter.com/sense_think_act}
– Discourse: https://discourse.ros.org/c/sensethinkact/71}