Students develop new technology for Husqvarna’s Automowers

65 Computer Engineering students at the School of Engineering (JTH) at Jönköping University (JU) have developed new functions for Husqvarna Automovers.

"The JTH students are incredibly talented. They have with new knowledge and perspectives, and we have seen several talents among them that would be interesting for us to hire,” says Björn Mannefred, Roboticist & Software Design Manager at Husqvarna.

The students in the project were in the final year of the Computer Engineering: Software Development and Mobile Platforms programme at JTH. The purpose of the course Intelligent Mobile Systems, this year with focus on Husqvarna Automowers, is for the students to work with industrial products. At the same time, the companies can follow the students' work closely.

"So this is a win-win situation for everyone involved," says the programme manager Jasmin Jakupovic.

"Has fantastic skills"

Björn Mannefred was satisfied with the students' efforts.

“JTH has fantastic skills in this area, and we learned things from the students every day. It is almost the best thing about my job, to see new engineering students come with new knowledge from the university and that they collaborate with our experienced engineers,” he says.

Björn Mannefred thinks that JTH is good at being a university close to the real industry and that they are responsive to their needs. Emely Kara, who was part of one of the eight student groups in the project, says that she and her co-workers, among other things, implemented an image processor in their robotic lawnmower so that it avoided obstacles on the lawn.

“It was fun to come up with our own ideas for how we could improve a product that is already on the market,” she says.

”Great hardware"

Leon Eckerbom's group also invested in object recognition so that the Automower they worked with informed the user about obstacles on the lawn and avoided driving into them. He thought it was great fun to collaborate with Husqvarna.

“We got access to both great hardware and a person on the inside who knew the system and quickly came up with solutions when we stumbled upon a problem. This is the closest we have come to working with a real project and it was very rewarding that we ourselves set the structure for our meetings and work with the robotic lawnmower,” he says.