Anyone who has ever spent an afternoon mowing lawns knows the downsides of the job: walking in monotonous straight lines with the filthy emissions of a two-stroke engine in their face, and a subway’s worth of noise to contend with. Enter Husqvarna‘s Automower, a solar-powered, zero-emission lawn-Roomba that offers an attractive (albeit pricy) replacement.
After installing a low laying or buried wire perimeter to set the boundaries of the lawn, the Automower mows to your preferred length on a regular basis. Because the grass is cut frequently and finely, the cuttings decompose rapidly into a mulch that the unit can disperse on future cuts. Solar panels allow the Automower to charge on sunny days, granting up to a quarter of an acre of cutting for each 10 hours. When the charge is running low, the mower scurries towards its charging station automatically.
Like other electric mowers, the Automower is zero-emissions, and Husqvarna says that its noise levels are around 63dB – compared to 100dB for a conventional mower. If we adjust for shouts of frustration, this is likely even quieter than the Mowercycle.
While the idea of robots armed with rotating blades and a solar installation may invite some technological anxiety, rest assured that the Automower weighs under 20lbs and is presumably vulnerable to most conventional weapons. For the time being, the Automower is pet and kid-friendly – exceptionally kid-friendly if you’re removing a chore from their schedule, but with a price-tag of £2,000, that’s a lot of allowance.
7 Responses to “The Solar-Powered Robotic Automower”
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What a waste of resources!
There should be NOTHING invested in lawnmowers other that the old push style ones. The environmentally responsible option is to reduce the size of one\\\’s lawn: PLANT FOOD!
@gregpeters:
Are you joking?
If everyone in this country tried to grow as much food as they needed to eat, we would run out of land and STILL not have enough food to survive. Your “environmentally responsible” option would actually be more harmful to the environment than leaving our laws the same size. On top of that, farming is notorious for stripping minerals out of soils, preventing any further growth. Joe Shmoe can’t just make a farm in his backyard to feed his family with magical fruits. Not everybody lives in areas where farming is feasible. Not everybody knows how to farm. Not everybody has the economic means to begin farming. Do some research before you post your opinion as fact. I have never seen someone so ignorant on environmental issues try to lecture others on the environment
Oh, and you also talk about being environmentally responsible but then you say that we SHOULDN’T invest in a solar powered robotic lawnmower? This uses solar power and emits no sound pollution. Compare that to the push-mowers you are advocating, which use fossil fuels and emit tons of noise.
I know ranting about being “environmentally responsible” makes you feel good (even though what you said we should do is environmentally destructive compared to this), gregpeters, but luckily for the real world most of us are gonna go with common sense here.
[...] seen several solar-powered lawn mowers lately, and they’re generally high-tech, super space-cadety looking things. That’s part [...]
“the filthy emissions of a two-stroke engine in their face”
I’ve never seen a two stroke lawn mower before, all the ones I’ve ever used were four-stroke.
we need to automate the future and this is a great step. To the first comment time is our biggest investment we make and we need to have time for what we want. To be more green we need freedom.
The product looks great and if it does what it says is brilliant, but £2000 is grossly excessive when will a manufacturer put a product out that is both environmentally friendly and commercially attractive if they want the public to move to greener solutions make them affordable for all – price them in line with existing products. Solar technology prices especially with the thin film technologies are getting cheaper by the day so there is no excuse.