Robot Lawn Mowers
posted May 12, 2021, 9:45 PM by Elizabeth Lau (2021)
In my economics class, we’re required to create a fictional startup in order to understand how businesses work. My group came up with a pretty good idea: solar powered lawn mowers, an industry that is still under heavy development. But along the way, we discovered a side of lawn mowers that none of us knew existed: Robot Lawnmowers. Akin to roombas, but for your lawn, the little bulky robots are fun to watch in action.
Interestingly enough, robot lawn mowers have been around for longer than you’d expect. Robot lawn mowers actually accounted for the second largest category of robots in domestic use back in 2005. Their concept is just like that of a roomba, with users marking out the border of their lawn for the robot and then the rest of the work is finished up by the lawn mower. Most robot lawn mowers use a random mowing system, bouncing around the lawn like the DVD logo on a tv screen until it marks that there are no more patches of grass to mow (varies per brand, but usually an hour per quarter acre is a good estimate). However, this too is changing and some robotic lawn mowers have more advanced technology that maps out the users lawn. Today’s robot lawn mowers are becoming increasingly sophisticated now harbouring features like rain sensors, self-docking and 4-wheel drive, essentially eliminating human interaction. They are also extremely advanced, adapting to sloped lawns and physical obstacles such as branches that may end up blocking its path.
This is actually an extremely fast growing industry and in 2020 the projected market for robotic lawn mowers was expected to reach $1.3 billion. I was surprised to learn that this was such a large market, but it makes sense that I haven’t heard of it often, because this is actually trending in Europe and the market is already pretty large in Asia. They’re useful for not only homes, but for business owners or public spaces where it would be unsightly or take too much time for a person to mow the lawn. I’m not one to ever mow my lawn, but these robot lawn mowers really seem to make the job simple, easy and awesome.