8mo ago

I’m in a park. The grass is being mown by a robot.

We thought the rider fell off or something and it was going to crash. Then it turned and kept mowing. Park Roomba!

Another picture:

You're viewing a single thread.

213 comments

My curiosity got the best of me, here's the link to Wright: https://www.wrightmfg.com/products/mowers/commercial/stand-on/robotic-zk/
The Mower
40HP Vanguard Engine
Hydro-Gear Smartec Drive-By-Wire 12cc
15.5 Gallon Fuel Capacity
Centimeter-level accurate RTK GPS
Commercial-grade Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)
Depth-sensing object detection cameras
Rock-solid wireless emergency stop
Remote control mode
Live Greenzie support: Call for support while in the field for real-time fixes.
The Software
Mow the boundary once, and the mower fills in the rest
Remembers maps and can repeat them when you come back. Just place it in the previous boundary.
Create no-go zones that will be saved with your map to avoid hitting hard-to-see obstacles like drain covers or small pipes sticking out of the ground.
Record and repeat: Record yourself mowing the entire property, and the mower will replicate your movement.
Manage the mower with the controller or a smart device in real-time.
Advanced fleet support: See how your fleet is performing. Replay entire jobs, not just a dot on the map.
Run multiple units at once.
Set the stripe angle (for those stunning cross-hatch patterns)
Seamless automatic updates
- Damn, $45k. Though I guess for something like a park it probably has a pretty quick ROI.
  
  If you want one for your own yard, there are significantly cheaper options. The husqvarna automower is under $1000 and can be integrated into Home Assistant. I've seen a lot of positive opinions about it in the HA communities
  
  Nah, my yard is tiny and I don't mind mowing it. I have a Ryobi battery mower so it's super-easy to do. If I ever move somewhere with a bigger yard though I would seriously consider it. Especially as I already have Home Assistant running!
  
  Hello fellow Ryobi mower owner. Or as I call it, my $500 gym membership.
  I have a big old ride on mower as well but hate all the noise and the smell of exhaust, so rather just take three times as long pushing the Ryobi about.
  Nothing quite like the satisfying thwack when it eats a small blackberry bush or snaps a runaway wysteria tendril.
  
  At least the Ryobi is super-lightweight! I can easily carry it out of my garage and even with the battery it's far lighter to push around than a gas mower. I'm hard on blades though with so many sticks and pine cones, no matter how many I pick up I always miss some.
  
  I agree nice and light.
  It's not really equivalent to a gym membership, although I have to do a fair bit of Hungy Hippo'ing if I leave it for too long.
  
  I'm about to move into my first home with a yard and I've been debating it. I have terrible allergies and even though I really wanted to as a kid, I couldn't mow the lawn because I'd have snot running down my face half way through.
  I haven't had a reason to try again for a couple decades but I was gifted a mower so I'm gonna try doing it myself this summer. If it's bad and I can't find a local kid to hire, automower it is!
  
  Oh my allergies are horrible too, I just make sure to take a Sudafed (can't recall the generic name) before I start. I love that stuff, we always keep a stash around especially as you have to get it from the pharmacy and they don't keep very much stock it seems.
  
  Ohh Sudafed and I are already well acquainted lol
  But if I have to take drugs just to mow the lawn, I'm definitely looking at alternatives.
  
  Yeah, there's a $600 model where you have to put in wire and the lowest price RTK is about $1k. I've got people in my neighborhood with both and they've both said good things about it.
  
  The lower price for 600m² I saw here is 200$. It's very cheap.
- I built an autosteer called AgOpenGPS for our tractors that pretty much does this. Cost about $1000 per unit. We still sit in the tractor because there's a hell of a lot going on besides steering the tractor, but it will drive the entire field without intervention.
  
  Fields generally have few, if any, objects to consider. I'm not sure this is comparable.
- At a quick glance on that site I didn't see any information about safety. Did you come across anything?
  I guess there is the line about object sensors, but would like to know a little more before deploying something with rotating blades (which is still pretty cool, don't get me wrong)
  
  It's very safe. Any orphans caught in the blades won't do any harm to the mower.
  
  And can it avoid running over trash? Because if they automate the mowing you better believe nobody is out picking up the trash before mowing. And are they paying someone to ensure nobody vandalizes the machine so the cost savings is moot.
  
  Well hopefully they bought one of those flame throwing robot dogs that sits crouching in the woods in case someone tries to spray paint a penis on this thing.
- Okay somehow the words rock solid wireless emergency stop seem oxymoronic. I don't care how it was programmed what wireless communication system uses or anything else. I have a hard time believing wireless emergency stops can be foolproof.
  
  We know they can't. Unfortunately the target demographic for this mower probably doesn't care if the e-stop works.

213 comments