Robot Crocodile That Mows the Lawn!

We bring to life kids' invention ideas on our youtube channel and 5 year old Dylan had an awesome idea for a robot crocodile that mows your lawn and waters the garden and so we brought it to life!

If you know of any 4-11 year olds who might like their invention brought to life then check out our website to find out how.

Happy Inventing,

Ruth & Shawn

Are you a teacher or a parent? See our attached Invention worksheet to use at home or in the classroom.

To bring to life Dylan's invention we're going to need a well-behaved crocodile, onto which we can mount an automated lawn mower, with a motor to drive the crocodile along, and a sprinkler system so it can water the garden as it goes!

We couldn't find a crocodile but we did find a wonderful fibreglass alligator called Maria Von Snap who formed the base of Dylan's invention.

We modified a battery powered lawn mower so that we could connect it to Maria and turn it on and off remotely via a relay. (*DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!*)

Maria needed some dental work so her jaw would open and close. We inserted a servo motor so we could make her snap!

So that we could drive and steer Maria the Croc-bot around we combined a mobility scooter motor and a windscreen wiper motor so that we can drive Maria along. Both are connected to a remote controller so that one trigger controlled the wheels and the other the wiper motor so we could steer. We mounted some wood into Maria so we could attached our steering contraption.

We used a rotary tool to cut slots in Maria for the lawn mower and steering (while wearing PPE- Fibreglass dust irritates the skin and lungs)

So we took sprinkler for waiting the garden and modified it so we could mount it on the top of the CrocBot (As a general rule do not combine water and electrics). We plumbed the pipes through Maria and then it was time for a MAKEOVER!

Makeover Time! We primed and painted Maria and gave her an awesome mohican (using an old brush) and gave her some crocodile lashes.

We then put Maria through her paces- check out our video to see how it went!