Just a dream of home-owners in the 1940's, now you can buy this powerful, high-end robotic lawnmower:
(Husqvqrnq Automaker 450x video)
Now, pushing a lawn mower is a sweaty chore, making lawn care the perfect assignment for an automaton. Husqvarna‘s new high-end robotic lawn caretaker, the Husqvarna Automower 450x, costs $3,500. The company makes cheaper models around $2,000, and the competing Robomow costs $2,099. Most of these smart mowers can be controlled by an app, but the biggest Husqvarna can cover the most ground—up to 1.25 acres. I was eager to put it to work on my glorious greenery.
The first step involves corralling the ‘bot. Like the Roomba, which uses cone-shaped plastic beacons to indicate where to work (and where not to) in your home, you tell the Husky where to mow by staking a perimeter with green wire...
In his 1944 novella City, Clifford Simak describes the joys of the robotic lawn mower:
Gramp Stevens sat in a lawn chair, watching the mower at work, feeling the warm, soft sunshine seep into his bones. The mower reached the edge of the lawn, clucked to itself like a contented hen, made a neat turn and trundled down another swath. The bag holding the clippings bulged.
(Read more about the robot lawn mower)
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