This is scary stuff.............

[FIREMAN]

Was at home reading the latest issue of Family Handyman(the wife got it thinking i'd find some time to work at home)lol. Seriously though, There is an article about a robot lawnmower, made by husqavarna, seems strange to me. I'm curious if anyone else has seen this machine and what are your thought on its application? To me it seems like something of an expensive gimmick, the only reason I mention it is I wonder what the future holds.<br>SOME ROUGH SPECS......<br>1) battery powered, when batt gets low will finds own charging station and dock to it, then will automatically continue mowing after charging.<br>2)uses an underground wire system for guidance, similar to fenceless dog restraint.<br>3)can mow day or night, has a timer<br>4)cost....2,000 dollars plus about 350 for underground wire install(this can only be done by their techs)<br>So all opinions would be welcome just thought some comments would be interesting.<p><p><p><p><p><br>

[geogunn]

I think I need one of those! for my own yard, of course.<p>unfortunately, my customers still have to get a monthly bill for my services!<p>GEO

[northeast]

maybe in the future we can all just sit home and collect a monthly fee for renting the huskys by the month,and do service calls,someone has to maintain em,sharpen blades. up here in maine it would burn itself up in may trying to cut the long wet stuff. nick

[Guido]

I agree with Nick. We'll just have to adapt if anything like that ever happens. I know we can never agree on anything around here, but lets at least make one deal: If it ever comes down to this, the going labor rate will be $5,000.00 an hour to install these stupid little things!! LOL This way if we have to go out of buisiness , we go out with a BANG!<p>----------<br>&lt;a href=&quot;http://communities.msn.com/guidosequipmentpics/&quot;&gt;&quot;Guido&quot;&lt;/a&gt;<br>David M. Famiglietti

[JB1]

they have had this item at the expo the last few years . Pretty interesting to watch.

[bdemir]

Lawrence Stone said in one of his post that he was going to make hos movers use a remote computer of some sort and that he would sit back and smoke a cigarette. It is not hard to do it if you have some haevy duty servos. I think he said something about having two of them at once or so. Wow that would be pretty cool. It would be safe on athletic fields but never on a residential. Could you emagine hitting a hile of some sort and then trying to run after it or run away.Lol

[MOW ED]

Its true and in production but it will never replace us. I hope. <br>For my state it is being distributed by Lieds Landscaping in Neenah Wisconsin. The above prices are correct. They showed the underside and it is a spinning type disk with plastic fingers that are supposed to be relatively harmless. The thing is computer controlled and goes home after about an hour and a half to recharge and mow again. I would like to see it in 5 or 6&quot; grass. They said right out that you still have to trim and it is not very good for large yards. <br>Technology is pretty neat but it cant do it all.

[jeffyr]

You guys should check out www.robomow.com.<br>You will laugh.

[Lanelle]

The first application I heard of for these mowers was several years ago. They were purchased by the Fed. Govt. for use in the courtyards of the CIA headquarters because of security issues. Don't even think about stripes with these things. :)<p>----------<br>Lanelle<br>

[mountain man]

The husky I saw was under $1000. It does work but after the novelty wares off I'm sure it would get old always having this little ardvark going back and forth accros the yard. It takes about and hour to mow the area of a tennis court.

[Doug406]

Yeah, we saw that in the Husky brosure. We all had a good laugh at it. Looks like it would leave some nice stripes! Look out trespassers, no need for a dog either, the mower may cut your leg up ! Boy I would want my kids in the yard with that thing hovering around. A big lot would always be uneven. What about trimming. Maybe this will do all the small yards so we do not need to be troubled with the junk.

[HOMER]

Who's gonna pick up all the toys? You know the homeowner ain't going to. I guess the mower will have to grow some arms and legs to replace anybody with a brain.<p>Homer

[yardsmith]

saw it also last yr. at expo-<br>my guess is husky had $$ to burn from a grant that had to be spent on SOMETHING or lose it, & this is what they came up with.<br>The thing takes HOURS to do a 20 min. push mow lawn, because it bounces back & forth like a rubber ball on a screen saver, cutting the lawn by process of randomly bouncing back & forth 6000 times off the boundary wires imbedded in the lawn.<br>Dog would prob. chew it up, or someone steal this $900 toy off the lawn to piss you off.<br>We don't have to worry any time soon. By the time 1)they get a good working model out & 2)it becomes affordable to the mass public, we should have enuf warning to adapt or go into another line of work. I'd never waste my $$ on their spinning utility knife blade mower.<p>----------<br>Smitty ô¿ô<br>

[thelawnguy]

it operates on the same principle as those toy trains you had as a kid, the drive wheels are ingeniously rigged to a rotating trolley, so when the mower touches something it changes direction, so the whole lawn is eventually mowed except for under the toys.<p>Bill

[eggy]

sounds like Husky is trying to find away to put us out....Hmmmm maybe we shouldnt buy any of their products now.....

[Scraper]

Don't be surprised if you see large &quot;robotic&quot; commercial mowers (36&quot; to 61&quot;) in the very near future. Don't think that there aren't prototypes out there right now! :(<br><p><font size="1">Edited by: Scraper

[Scraper]

Don't be surprised if you see large &quot;robotic&quot; commercial mowers (36&quot; to 61&quot;) in the very near future. Don't think that there aren't prototypes out there right now! :eek:

[lawrence stone]

Tractors with computers interfaced to gps units have already been employed on large commercial farming operations.<p>In a few more years the size and cost of<br>these computer controlled units will decrease to the point they will be economical in commerical lawn mowing applications.<p>The new ZTR you just purchased will be a<br>dinosaur in just a few years. That is unless<br>you can adapt it to the new technology.<p>The swami stone has spoken.

[Charles]

The hardest part of yard work is the weedeating and blowing the drive off. Most of my customers would do their yard them selves if not for that. So I don't think we have to worry that much

[richard2]

i currently run 37 robo mow 3's ( they're not listed on the web site...) these robomows do the work of 1000 scrubs in the rain...,i have sold my SICKEST OF THE SICKEST GRASS MUNCHER BAGGER WITH SIDE DITCH MOWERS, with full blower option, AND GPS TRACKING WITH ALTIMETER....ALL THAT FOR A FLEET OF ROBO MOWS! WOW!!! it seems like ages ago i had to pay L&I,etc. they are great...so if you are starting out---go and get your microsoft certification and get a job...robomow is is aimed at you...

[Scraper]

Yeah right R2...D2

[1stclasslawns]

Scary indeed .... There is now a combind out now that works off of GPS. I saw some stuff on it at a recent Farmers meeting.<br> They program the GPS way points of a grain field into a computer and the machine does the rest, including satilite paging when the hopper is full, or when somthing could be wrong with the machine itself.<br>Whats next??? self opening beer cans???

[FIREMAN]

I'D RATHER SEE SELF OPENING BEER CANS THAN GIMMICK MACHINES FOR THE UNINFORMED..LOL

[richard2]

my robomow fleet is equipted with optional keg coolers, this helps on holiday weekend fridays for meetings with property managers...next years robomow will be available with a waterbong option...

[southside]

Mower with a bong? Now thats scary.<p>Karl<br>

[Lance720]

They still don't weedeat and I don't think they would do well in a yard with stepped down edges<br>Lance<br>

[Twotoros]

Bring on the bots. there are so many of us in the bus that the feds will have to retrain us . We will recoup some tax $ paid in when retrained and I can get out of the killer sun . Seriously, I seen one demoed on tv and it done a mediocre job . And my dogs would rip it to pieces in an hour!

[Toroguy]

Nothing to fret folks, you will bring this time saving equipment to the site behind your nitrogen powered hovercraft. Your vegetables will be grown on the Ocean floor. A condo on Mars. Then you can have your head transplanted onto your clones body, once it reaches the age of 18. The clone head can then be cryogenically frozen for future use.<p>An indoor vacuum cleaner would be less dangerous to use as a robot, a mower, just hype.<p>Stone can serve me a road kill crow if our industry is affected by this groovy fad.

[lawrence stone]

toroguy wrote:<p>&gt;Stone can serve me a road kill crow if our industry is affected by this groovy fad. <br> <br>Would you ketchup or steak sauce with your groundhog?

[Toroguy]

Stone, <br>A-1<br>Not the auto response system, just steak sauce...of course only if necessary.<p>Beakless preferred.

[Toroguy]

Last year we heard of this thing. Now commercials with cars screaching as they see the iMow. Home Depot is selling the robot mowers. I havnt heard any sale figures yet, or seen any of these creatures in yards as of yet.

Anybody seen any of these mowers in operation yet?

[awm]

change is constant. people thought astroturf would be
the thing,then grass that doesnt grow much etc.
an lco with real know how will always be in demand.

[lawnman_scott]

wouldnt it be cool to be there when the lawyer with a porche is showing it off to his friend and it gets low and goes in the garage to recharge it self automatically and scrapes the side of his car? Im not too worried.

[SLS]

The garden hose manufacturers should LOVE these things! :D

When the infrared sensor unit goes bad one day...LOOK OUT, KITTY!:eek: