[CES 2009] Husqvarna Robot Mower

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 26 of January , 2009 at 4:19 am

Right next to the SmartMow booth at CES was Husqvarna, makers of their own robotic lawn mowing system. The Husqvarna Automower is a product you can actually buy, right now, in the US. It’s significantly more expensive than the SmartMow system, with a base price of $1300 (going up to $3k), but there are a bunch of extras that may make it worth paying for… Besides the badass Cylon look, I mean.

The Automower does just about everything you’d expect from a robot lawn mower: it’s fully automatic, has a recharging dock, uses three blades to mulch grass as it cuts, has touch sensors to avoid obstacles, and depends on an edge wire to find its way around your lawn. It can also use special guide wires to direct it to different areas of your lawn that it might find hard to reach randomly. The dock itself includes a short range radio beacon to help guide the robot back home when it needs to charge. The Automower has a display panel with a keypad and a whole bunch of different programming options, including settings for different lawns, cut times, patterns, return strategies, and lots more. It’s capable of running 24 hours per day, and will even mow in the rain.

Husqvarna has also been developing a solar-assisted version of the Automower, which will go on sale in the US in March for about $3000. This is a hybrid mower, not a solar powered one, and the panels are used to extend the runtime, not recharge the robot completely. On a good day the mower will run nearly 25% longer, using the sun to cut (for example) .65 acre instead of .5 before it needs to charge. Husqvarna says they tried building a completely solar powered robot mower, but it required a huge auxiliary panel (something like 12 square feet), and the fact that the robot couldn’t mow reliably (it had to wait for a sunny day) kind of defeated the purpose of an automated lawn care system. The important point, though, is that electric mowers in general are far more environmentally friendly than their gas cousins, and adding a solar panel just makes things even better.

The Husqvarna Automower is currently available in the US from various distributors.

[ Husqvarna Automower ]

Comments (2)

Category: Consumer

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2 Comments

Comment by alex holder

Made Sunday, 5 of April , 2009 at 12:35 pm

this is the dumbest thing ever why in the world would you want a robot to cut your yard are you really this lazy? What ever happened to the hard working american race? People used to be proud to be able to work hard and cut grass you guys are ruining that. This is the stupidest mower in the world.

Comment by Melissa Jackson

Made Thursday, 28 of May , 2009 at 10:18 am

Alex, you are looking it too narrowly. I’ve used Automowers to mow my lawn for 3 years now. They mow under the low hanging trees where I can’t reach, they mow when I’m out of town, and they mow when it’s 98° and 100% humidity. The yard is beautiful every day, not just on mowing day, and the mowers don’t belch noxious emissions or wake the neighbor at 8am on Sunday. They even have the potential to allow disabled people to care for their own yard.