System Overview

Type: Architecture

What You're Building

An autonomous ground rover that drags a cloth to collect ticks, captures images of that cloth, and maps tick density over space and time.

This is essentially:

• A mobile sampling system
• A data collection pipeline
• A robotics platform you can iterate on

System Architecture

[RC Crawler]
   ├── Movement (ESC + steering servo)
   ├── Main battery (driving only)
   │
   └── [Raspberry Pi System]
         ├── Camera (looks at drag cloth)
         ├── GPS (location tagging)
         ├── ADC (battery monitoring)
         ├── PWM driver (controls vehicle)
         └── WiFi (talks to you)

Behind the rover:

[Drag bar] → [White cloth] → [Ticks collected]
                          ↑
                    Camera looking down

Key Design Decisions

1. Cloth-based Detection

• Controlled surface
• High contrast
• Repeatable

2. Stop-and-Capture

• Eliminates blur
• Improves accuracy

3. Separate Pi Power

• Stability
• Reliability

Operation Flow

1. Start — Rover placed at "home", GPS position saved
2. Patrol — Rover drives along yard edge, drag cloth collects ticks
3. Sampling loop — move → stop → capture image → move → repeat
4. Detection — Process images offline (count ticks, filter debris, build dataset)
5. Mapping — Generate tick density heatmap and time-based trends
6. Return-to-home — When battery low, rover navigates back and alerts

Future Capabilities

Once working, this platform can:

• Track tick hotspots
• Compare seasons and weather
• Optimize yard treatment strategies
• Build datasets for ML detection and automation