Hello, First off, I am new to ROS and amazed at all the awesome things people have done with the software. I am working with a Pioneer 3-AT and would like to build an autonomous lawn mower using a kinect and ultrasonic sesnor (maxbotix MB1010) which I might not need anymore. This is for a senior design project and I am now working on it alone because my partner became very ill and needed brain surgery. I hope he gets better soon and want to continue to work on the project. I am using Ubuntu 13.04 and have installed ROS, ROSARIA, and the freenect_stack. I have gone through most of the main ROS tutorials (such as creating a package, etc.) and will finish the rest tonight. For the project, there will be a laptop on top of the robot which will connect to the Pioneer 3-AT with a serial to usb cable and the kinect sensor along with a custom made trailer hitch with an electric motor and battery to cut the grass. (The frame is built but I need to order the electric motor and blade along with an additional battery.) I would like to have the robot navigate a lawn while staying inside the lawn by detecting the color of the boundary which will either be dirt or cement. Also, I would like the robot to avoid obstacles such as a human or a football for example. Can the kinect track color and also track objects at the same time? I have been searching and reading many tutorials and am a little daunted when it comes to which package/ library I should use, and which tutorials I should be reading. Rviz seems to be very useful and I imagine I will need to install the Point Cloud Library interface stack and learn how that works along with the navigation stack. Could anyone point me to some tutorials and reading for what I would like to achieve? I understand that the kinect does not work in direct sunlight, but it would still work on cloudy days right?

Thanks, Matthew