Mowing robots are making for more and more pristine lawns with less effort. — dpa
They have names like Robby, Robomow or Viking iMow and can be found hard at work on the lawn. Like their vacuum-cleaning colleagues inside the house, lawn robots keep things tidy outdoors.
"I thought mowing robots were an unnecessary technical gadget until a friend of mine was determined to get one," says one user, Volker Glienke. As a technology fan, however, he quickly overcame his scepticism. “Somehow it's more fun to work in the garden when there's also a gadget working away in the background.”
Using sensors, mowing robots automatically detect obstacles and mow either randomly or in systematic rows. Some models can be controlled with a smartphone and stop mowing automatically in the rain.
Through permanent cutting and mulching, it can achieve good results mowing the lawn, says the Garden Industry Association in Germany. The fine, flat cuttings serve to fertilise the lawn, which thus becomes denser and more resistant in the long term.
Although the European market for autonomous lawnmowers grew by 40% between 2016 and 2017, the perfect lawn is still not enough of a reason for many to buy an autonomous lawnmower. “Users of a mowing robot are divided into two groups,” explains Fabian Harder, who develops WiFi modules for lawn robots so that they can be operated with smartphones.
“There are those who are primarily interested in making work easier and for whom a beautiful lawn is important. And there are the nerds, for whom technology is at the forefront.” The latter owners often build sheds for their robots, give them names and put more work into them than would be required from a conventional lawnmower.
Gadget lover Glienke has indeed given his robot its own garage. “It now also has a small roof over the charging station, so that it’s not constantly exposed to the sun while charging. In addition, I run it with solar power, which also makes it more ecological to use,” he says.
According to the Garden Industry Association, the trend is towards smart gardens with networked devices and artificial intelligence. “For example, when it comes to measuring important parameters for plants or networking equipment for irrigation and mowing. The main focus here is on environmental friendliness.”
Better lawn campaigners also welcome the trend. “In general, there is also a trend towards automation in green area maintenance. This applies above all to irrigation computers and mowing robots for football and golf courses,” says the green lawn campaigner Harald Nonn.
For those with small and exposed urban gardens, however, the digital technology is not quite as attractive as for people with suburban or rural lawns.
For a start, there is still a risk of theft, particularly with such expensive devices. The digital mowers cost between US$500 (RM2,072) and US$1,800 (RM7,460), and gardeners pay up to €4,000 (RM19,095) for the top models. – dpa
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