Gardening in the New Millenium
We may be a few decades away from Rosie, the Bronx-accented android who cleaned up after the Jetsons. But there's no question that the age of the helpful household robot is dawning.
The Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, which caroms around a room looking like a demon-possessed bath scale, has sold more than a million units to date worldwide. It has even become a recurring character on the Fox sitcom "Arrested Development."
Then there's Clocky, an MIT student's alarm-clock prototype actually being considered for production, which jumps from your nightstand and rolls away when you hit the snooze button -- forcing you to get out of bed to shut it off. Hit the snooze button again, and Clocky wheels off to a new hiding place. (Thanks, MIT. Don't you people have more important things to do?)
Now comes the Robomow RL 1000: an automaton that, without supervision, will trim your lawn for you -- tirelessly and dependably if a tad inefficiently. Its makers are betting that an $2,000.00 price isn't too steep for homeowners who want to say goodbye to yard work’s most tedious task.
The RL 1000 is the most up-to-date incarnation of a mower developed by Friendly Robotics, a company founded in the early 1990s by a pair of former Israeli F-16 fighter pilots. One was an engineer with a lifelong interest in robots; the other was a businessman skilled in raising capital. They began selling the first Robomowers in 1994. Today the grass-hungry gizmos are sold in more than two dozen countries.
A recent demonstration at the Frederick offices of http://www.envi-ro-botics.com , an online dealer, illustrated how the machine goes about its mission.
To keep the device from mowing every yard on the block, a thin wire is pegged close to the ground around the perimeter of a property. (Eventually grass will grow over wires and pegs, protecting and concealing them.) When switched on, the Robomow reads a signal from the wire and registers the boundaries of the yard. Then it starts moving in a roughly triangular pattern, changing directions when it reaches the perimeter wire or bumps into a tree, a birdbath, a stray football left behind by neighborhood kids -- until every square foot of the lawn has been, somewhat haphazardly, cut. Those partial to tidy straight mow marks may not be satisfied.
Because its movement is basically mindless and random, the Robomow can take two to three times longer than would a human being. But that's time the owner can spend doing something other than panting and wheezing beneath a hot sun.
The RL 1000 improves upon its predecessor, the RL 850, thanks to the addition of a timer that can be preset. Program the Robomow to do its thing, say, every Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. Until that instant the device will stay in its docking station, charging its battery and awaiting the fulfillment of its electronic destiny. When Wednesday afternoon comes around, it will dislodge from the docking station -- emitting a brief audio track of martial-sounding drums and a peppy bugle fanfare -- and start cutting. When it runs low on juice, the RL 1000 will zip back to home base for a fill-up, and then resume cutting until the job is completed.
At 80-plus pounds, the Robomow bulk is its own best theft deterrent, but it also has a feature that allows it to be turned on only after a four-digit code has been entered . It's no louder than a rotary sprinkler, so it can run at night and not annoy the neighbors. Blade settings are adjustable, and cut grass is converted to a super-fine mulch that decomposes quickly, helping to fertilize the lawn.
It can even cut on a slope without flipping over, provided the grade is no steeper than 15 degrees. "If a slope is currently being cut with a walk-behind," as the manufacturer puts it, "the Robomow will handle it fine."
Almost all Robomow sales in this country come from the Internet, says Ames Tiedeman of Systems Trading Corp., the Robomow’s North American distributor. (vendors are at http://www.envi-ro-botics.com.) He notes that the robot's typical American buyer is a male earning somewhere between $50,000 and $80,000 a year.
"The first person who is going to buy it is the techno-geek," says Tiedeman, "somebody who just wants something new. The second person is going to be somebody who just doesn't like to mow the lawn -- who detests the concept. And the third person is going to be somebody who used to mow their lawn, but can't any longer, maybe because of their age or their health."
Dan LoPresto of Altamonte Springs, Fla., fits into the first category. LoPresto once built a robotic arm as a school project; now he runs a technology consulting business, and describes himself as "a total gadget guy."
Upon buying a house a few months ago, LoPresto noticed that most of his neighbors paid yard services to handle their mowing -- a year-round proposition in Florida. "The price was about $100 a month, maybe a little less," he says. "I thought: After 24 months, that's about two grand, but this mower sells for $1,800. So the math supported my decision."
Its performance so far has made him a believer, with one minor complaint: Moving it out of his garage, where he keeps it docked, can take a while. "I wish I could get it from one place to another a little faster," he says, noting that he has to scuttle behind the slow-moving robot as he uses the detachable console to steer it toward his front yard. "You don't want to be lifting it. It's heavy. Plus, it'll beep at you if you try."
Linda Sheehan of Orlando bought an RL 850 a few years ago as a Christmas gift for her husband. "He'd have the whole neighborhood over in the backyard to watch the robot," she says. "I bought it for him as more of a gadget-y thing, something to play with. But it worked pretty well, though it couldn't get everywhere. We usually had to go back and weed-whack along the fence where it couldn't reach."
Future Robomow models, says Tiedeman, may incorporate GPS technology to help the robot map and navigate space more efficiently. And while the manufacturers say that a little drizzle won't hurt the Robomow, they're working on a sensor that will alert it to water droplets on its shell, sending it back to its docking station to wait out a storm.
Yes, this robot is smart enough to mow your lawn, smart enough to keep a schedule, even smart enough to recharge itself when it's low on fuel.
It even has the sense to come in out of the rain.
