Toro autonomous fairway mower. A. I-powered robotic lawnmowers help you reclaim your summer days

But they’re a lot different than that robotic vacuum in your living room.

It’s the middle of summer. It’s in the 90s. (Fahrenheit.) It’s so humid that even a short walk to the mailbox leaves you drenched in sweat. Mowing the grass is the last thing you want to do.

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It’s the middle of summer. It’s in the 90s. (Fahrenheit.) It’s so humid that even a short walk to the mailbox leaves you drenched in sweat. Mowing the grass is the last thing you want to do.

Unfortunately, last weekend was much the same. And now, your homeowner’s association is eagerly awaiting the chance to send you a nastygram. Even worse, your overly ambitious neighbor Tom cut his grass three days ago, so your front yard comparatively is looking more and more like a jungle.

Salvation (and a sweat-free Saturday), though, might be within reach thanks to robotics and artificial intelligence.

Just as the Roomba revolutionized vacuuming, robotic lawnmowers are hoping to transform lawncare. It is, in many ways, a fairly rudimentary technology at the moment, but manufacturers are leaning more heavily into A.I. to create more efficient machines that increase your spare time.

“We wanted to give people their weekends back,” says Greg Janey, vice president, residential and landscape contractor business at The Toro Company. “It could be a customer with an eighth of an acre who wants to spend time with family and friends. It could be a customer who has up to an acre…that…appreciates a yard that looks like a fairway every day.”

Toro is a newcomer in the robotic vacuum space. Its product, which doesn’t even have a formal retail name yet, will begin taking pre-orders this fall, with availability beginning in spring 2023. It’s not entering a crowded market, per se, but competitors are certainly out there. Husqvarna, Worx, and even Segway have products on the market already.

Robotic mowers tend to cost about the same as a rider mower, somewhere in the 1,000 to 1,500 range. And in the U.S., they represent less than 5% of the U.S. lawnmower market, estimates Katie Roberts, a senior product manager at Positec Tool Corp., which makes the Worx Landroid.

“Not a lot of people know they exist, and when they do find out, their minds are kind of blown,” she says.

The story is a bit different in parts of Europe, however.

“[Buyers were] initially early adopters, which is, I think, where you are in the States today, but now in Sweden, this is mainstream,” says Patrik Jagenstedt, director of advanced development at Husqvarna’s Robotics AI Lab. “If you buy a new mower, you would buy a robotic mower…It’s so much more than not having to do the lawnmower, it’s the relief, the peace of mind that you don’t have to think about it.”

Not a Roomba

Given their somewhat similar shapes and the seemingly random path in which they operate, it’s easy to lump robotic vacuums and lawnmowers in the same category, but the technology behind them is notable different. Vacuums bounce infrared sensors off of the wall and ceiling to get a sense of location. Outside, though, there’s no surface for those signals to rebound.

That’s why boundary wire, which sends out a low-power signal that the mower recognizes as a no-go zone, has been the perimeter marker of choice so far. Before they begin operating a robot mower, owners must mark the edges of their lawn, as well as cordon off areas like gardens and trees. (It’s a sometimes-frustrating process that takes more time than you might imagine.)

But change is in the works for some manufacturers. Husqvarna is moving towards a GPS-based system in its commercial models now, says Jagenstedt, and expects to launch that for consumer models in 2023 or 2024. And Toro’s forthcoming model will use a proprietary 3D vision technology called SmartZone, that creates a digital map of your property as you walk it along the perimeter and regularly learns more as it mows. Adjustments can be made in the accompanying app.

Landroid, says Roberts, is investigating two options: GPS (though it worries about interference from trees and, in some cases, the house, to the signal) and real-time kinematic positioning, which uses a base station to correct for interferences with the GPS.

What’s it like?

A wireless option will, frankly, be welcome by users. Setting up the boundary wire yourself is likely to take several hours depending on the area you plan to cover. (We spent over two-and-a-half hours prepping a yard measuring less than a quarter-acre for testing.) And if you don’t secure it flush with the grass or taut enough, you can pretty much count on the mower slicing the wire and having to do some impromptu repairs. (Electrical tape is your friend.)

But once that work is complete (and, in fairness, there are services you can hire to do that work for you), the hard work is done. We tested a Landroid Model M, which followed a seemingly random pattern around the yard, trimming the grass with a spinning disk with three rotating cutting blades.

The system communicates with its base/charging station via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and the mower can be controlled from your phone. (An optional ultrasonic detection peripheral helps it navigate around trees and other obstacles.) And if the mower senses a downpour, it delays its daily scheduled cut by a time period of your choosing before venturing out. And the cut it provides is excellent.

When operating, the system is remarkably quiet compared to push and rider mowers—and could easily be run at night without disturbing neighbors. (Toro and Husqvarna say their systems are similarly silent.)

If someone is foolish enough to pick up the mower while it’s operating, it instantly shuts down. And should someone steal the system, it locks down, requiring a PIN code. (An optional peripheral on Landroid will also provide its location.)

Husqvarna’s device sounds an alarm if someone tries to abscond with the mower and has a GPS device built in. Janey says Toro’s will include a tracking device and also has an anti-theft code requirement.

The bigger picture

A.I. in the mowers themselves isn’t the end game. Husqvarna’s Jagenstedt notes that the company’s robots are open sourced, and can connect to Amazon’s Echo or Google digital assistants, letting them integrate with other products.

“We do not see that we will be completely owning this,” he says. “We should open our platform to other products.”

Toro has a different take, with plans to integrate its mower into a larger ecosphere of Smart yard products, from lighting to irrigation, which will be built off of the technology the company designed for golf courses and municipalities.

“I think there’ a growing level of homeowners that are extending their living experience into the outdoors,” says Janey. “And with that, the expectations of a Smart, connected experience come with that. The way that Toro as a company is able to leverage our more enterprise technologies, everything we do is designed around outdoor technology.”

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Are autonomous mowers the solution to the labor crisis?

Autonomous mowers will provide the golf maintenance industry relief from its labor crisis. The question is when.

It isn’t just that good help is hard to find these days. It’s also hard to afford.

Case in point, Jeff Miller, superintendent at The Santaluz Club in San Diego, who was faced with a labor shortage. So he decided to hire a robot.

Last year, Cub Cadet released the RG3 robotic putting green mower after its January 2015 acquisition of Precise Path Robotics. Miller was sold on it as soon as he saw it demonstrated. He started with one unit to test its efficiency. He’s already bought three more, which he says will save him an estimated 86,000 to 113,000 per year.

He operates each mower on five greens, the maximum capacity for one machine. Each morning before golfers get on the course, a crew member — the RG3’s wingman — hauls one to a hole and leaves it on the edge of the green. He situates four beacons around the outside of the green in a pattern specific to that hole. The beacons and the mower exchange sound waves, which tell the mower what green it’s on and that green’s cut specifications. Once the beacons are set, the wingman activates the mower, and the robot cuts the green on its own.

Miller reports that his operation runs more efficiently than ever and the robots haven’t erased his human workers. In fact, he hasn’t let anybody go and doesn’t plan to. Instead, he reallocates the labor to other tasks. Where he used to send a three-man crew, he now sends one crewmember and the robot. While the mower cuts, the wingman performs other tasks on the green. The RG3 cuts an average green of 5,000 square feet in about 50 minutes, giving the wingman a specific time frame for completing his end of the work.

“We do so much work by hand, like raking and rolling, that it just fit our operation perfectly,” Miller says. “When I put the robot out there, I free up three guys in the morning.”

Dabbling with technology

Robots are big business these days. From idea to implementation of any robotic technology takes years of work and millions in investment to come to fruition.

The National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) is a developmental wing of the renowned Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science in Pittsburgh. The 1,000-person Robotics Institute is one of the largest bodies of researchers studying the technology in the world. These minds are so coveted that Uber poached 40 of its faculty to work on an autonomous cab, leaving the company with a 5.5 million donation as reparation.

About 50 percent of NREC’s budget comes from partnerships with the U.S. government. The largest part of that fraction comes from the U.S. Department of Defense, for which NREC builds autonomous battle vehicles. NREC also has public sector partners, like John Deere. Its agriculture division isn’t selling driverless equipment yet, but products like the AutoTrac and the Auto Steer systems guide tractors to harvest crops, lay seed and perform general tasks at an efficiency rate unmatched by human control. All the while, the operator, or supervisor, sits back and monitors data on a video screen. The Washington Post even called Deere more progressive on autonomous technology than Google.

Jeff Legault, NREC’s director of strategic business development, says its purpose is to turn the Robotics Institute’s research into something tangible that its partners can bring to market.

“We’re trying to solve problems for clients instead of doing research of our own,” he says. “The problem is solved when we find the lowest cost solution.”

Currently, John Deere’s only foray into the robotic mower market is its Tango, a Roomba-vacuum-style mower for consumers that sells in England. Other mower manufacturers have gone down this road, too.

Cub Cadet’s robotic mower exchanges sound waves with beacons around a green that tell the unit what green it’s on.

Toro experimented with the idea of an autonomous mower more than a decade ago. In 2002, the company partnered with NREC to build an autonomous mower for the golf market. Toro gave NREC two mowers for the prototypes: a Greensmaster 3100 for mowing putting greens and a Groundmaster 3500 to mow sports fields.

“The hypothesis is if you can make a two-man crew into a one-man crew or a three-man crew into a two, it reduces the cost of labor,” says Dana Lonn, managing director of The Toro Co.’s Center for Advanced Turf Technology.

NREC and Toro were successful in building an autonomous mower prototype. Unlike a Roomba-style robotic mower, the autonomous mower did not need beacons or guide wires to operate. Instead, it used technology like Lidars, Pose Estimate and GPS to learn its position, surroundings and terrain and react to them. It gave the mower pinpoint accuracy and the ability to stop if a human or object got too close.

Though it worked, NREC and Toro were unable to produce the equipment at a realistic price, which the company saw as about double the market price for a commercial mower. At the time, this advanced technology wasn’t cheap enough. So Toro abandoned the project, and though the two organizations keep in touch, they haven’t actively worked together since 2013.

Leap forward

Rick Cuddihe is president of Rick Cuddihe Associates, which operates Lafayette Consulting Co. While on assignment for a client of his consulting firm in 2009, Cuddihe was researching the commercial mower market and mostly found what he calls, “varying degrees of good.”

Upon further research, Cuddihe stumbled upon NREC’s website detailing the project with Toro. He was enamored by the idea. He did more research and realized it could be done, and it could be done affordably. In his opinion, the robotics mower market is on the verge of a great leap forward, and he hopes to be a part of it.

“It’s my opinion that there’s going to be robotic golf equipment, and the big driver is the saving of labor,” says Cuddihe. “I’ve surveyed golf course owners all over the country and it has showed me that the average salary for an operator is 26,000.”

That’s about the same price that Cuddihe wants his autonomous mowing attachment — yes, an attachment — to cost. A golf course with three operators can go down to one operator who transports the mower from hole to hole and then cuts the greens and fringe while the robot knocks out the fairway and rough.

Sorry, no help with the fringe or around bunkers. Cuddihe says no one would make the investment in the necessary technology. What it would be capable of is exiting a fairway or rough as soon as a golfer sets foot on the tee.

On each tee box, a small electronic touch pad would allow golfers to control a mower in the fairway or rough. When golfers tap the pad, the mower would immediately exit 60 yards off to the side and sit there for 11 minutes to give the golfers a chance to finish the hole.

If the golfers don’t see the mower and hit a ball in its path, sensors on the unit would lift the reel 4 inches before the ball and 3 inches after.

“If this thing works the way we plan for it to work, somebody is going to like it,” says Cuddihe.

Technological advancements

Cuddihe, 67, knows the mower market. He’s been all over the industry, and fondly recalls the first days of zero-turn mowers. He’s now formed a partnership with the NREC, started Robotic Turf Equipment,and is embarking on a quest to bring an autonomous mower to market.

“It doesn’t interest me to do the same thing everyone else is doing,” Cuddihe says. “What excites me is bringing something new and different to the market.”

“There’s going to be robotic golf equipment, and the big driver is the saving of labor,” says Cuddihe.

Since the Toro project faltered the technology became cheaper and more accurate, Cuddihe says. In the first run, GPS technology was too weak. RTK base stations, which bolster GPS strength within a 100-meter radius, had to be used. Today they’re no longer necessary. Lidar — a device that is similar in operation to radar but measures distance by emitting pulsed laser light instead of microwaves — is cheaper now and can be coupled with or even replaced by cameras that can sense objects, similar to how the iPhone camera detects a face. The technology is so advanced today that a mower could have the ability to discern between flowers, weeds and grass.

“(People) are starving for ways to produce more work with the same amount of labor, increasing the productivity of their employees,” he says.

Cuddihe is crisscrossing the country trying to sell the innovative product.

He is targeting manufacturers with stakes in the golf market, like Jacobsen, John Deere and Toro.

If the autonomous mower hits the market, there might be sticker shock. Cuddihe estimates the entire system would be a 25,000 addition. But with the labor it could save an operation, it would be worth the investment, he says.

There are challenges. He’s trying to convince investors without a prototype. Cuddihe estimates a 2.5 million to 4 million investment is necessary for a completed project, which, to him, means getting a product to market.

Furthermore, the technology is vast. To come up with the most affordable solution, NREC researchers want to build a mower specific to the needs of a customer, which hasn’t been defined yet.

“Does it need to work at night? Does it need to work in the rain?” asks NREC’s Legault. “Maybe, maybe not. But the next step is engineering the system for a particular market and a particular application.”

Companies have met with Cuddihe and are interested in the technology, but they’re turned off once they find out there’s no prototype. It has created a chicken-and-egg scenario. To get an investor to believe in a product, he needs a prototype. To get a prototype, he needs an investor.

“Just come to NREC,” Cuddihe says to nonbelievers. “Once people see what’s going on here, they’ll know it’s possible. And once a prototype is built, everyone is going to want a piece of this technology.”

El Santaluz Cinco

Back at Santaluz Club, Miller is now up to a total of five RG3 autonomous mowers working on the course. Four he has purchased and another “loaner” that was intended to be a back-up just in case one mower broke down. Miller couldn’t help himself, and put the fifth mower to work on Santaluz’s greens and 10,000-square-foot nursery. He’s now looking to buy the loaner too because because “everything runs a lot smoother.”

“It’s nice to just set it down on the nursery and come back a couple hours later to a finshed job, instead of having someone mow it,” adds Miller.

The robotic uprising hasn’t taken over Santaluz just yet. Miller was able to hire four more crew members to his staff about a month after he bought the additional RG3s.

“Superintendents need to be patient,” says Miller. “It’s in the early stages, and we need to be supportive of the technology.”

Mower photos courtesy of Cub Cadet

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Autonomous Equipment as a Solution to the Labor Shortage

By Dave Kanicki posted on February 12, 2020 | Posted in Niche Markets

No sector of the equipment industry is immune to the labor shortage, and this certainly holds true for those in the lawn and golf course maintenance business. As workers of all skill levels become tougher to find, businesses are forced to do more with less. Autonomy could be the innovation that bridges the gap for businesses looking to stay in the green.

Labor Demand Doubles

At the heart of this situation is demand for service, which is growing faster than the available workforce. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that employment on golf courses and country clubs and in landscaping services has more than doubled between 1990 and 2018.

The concept of using self-driving equipment to address labor concerns is not new. A 2010 article from Robotics Business Review noted the potential in autonomous mowers, saying, “Given the labor-intensive nature of large-scale commercial landscaping and turf maintenance, Robotics Business Review sees very little chance that the potential market for autonomous or semiautonomous lawn-care equipment will vanish due to disinterest from customers.”

Manufacturers Looking at Autonomy

Major line manufacturers like John Deere and CNH Industrial have been in the autonomy space for some time. But it’s not just the major equipment manufacturers looking to the future of autonomy. Turf and landscape equipment manufacturers have been introducing models over the last several years.

Toro’s presence in the turf and golf course industries positions them well to implement autonomous technology effectively. According to Michael Shlisky, analyst with Dougherty Co., while Toro entered the autonomous mower market in 2001 and has not made any new entries in some time, he noted that the company’s window to re-enter with an improved product hasn’t closed yet.

“We think the potential for robotic mowers is high, but the products on the market at the current time are getting mixed reviews on social media at best,” said Shlisky. “Many involve special installation using buried wire boundaries, produce an uneven https://medsmagazine.com/generic-cialis-online/ cut, or cover limited amounts or types of terrain. That said, in 2020, there could be several new models on the market that improve upon the current technology, including Toro’s first products and other new entrants.”

It seems that Toro will need to move fast, however, as more brands move into the autonomous mower space. Competition is already in the market, whether it’s fairway mowers (like the TurfLynx F350), sports field mowers (like Echo’s offering) or consumer models (like the Husqvarna Automower and STIHL’s iMow).

Advancements are continuing to improve the functionality and price of the technology. As reported in Rural Lifestyle Dealer’s coverage of the 2019 GIEEXPO, Mean Green Mowers unveiled its own autonomous, electric mower unit at the show, the ATOM. Unlike the other equipment currently available in the industry, the ATOM requires no set up, piloting itself solely based on its KobiVision system of cameras and sensors. Steven Waelbers, Chief Technology Officer of The Kobi Company, said that the ATOM “is going to solve the biggest issue in landscaping today: the labor issue.”

Potential Barriers

The initial investment into autonomous mowers is a barrier to some, but saving on labor costs could be incentive enough for some groundskeepers. In a report from Golf.com, Bob Farren, director of maintenance at Pinehurst Resort, says that he believes autonomous mowers will be the industry’s next big innovation, saying, “It’s a high expense, but it will be more attractive with labor shortages.”

Dealers need to take a realistic look at market demand. In a 2018 report from Pennsylvania State University, Dan Eichenlaub, founder of the landscape firm Eichenlaub Inc., spoke with students about perceptions of robotic mowers. “You can have the best technology in the world, but if no customer wants it at their property, it isn’t a solution.” The report mentions that customers may have safety concerns about children and pets and may consider buying an autonomous mower as opposed to hiring someone who uses the technology.

Unveiling the ATOM at the GIE Expo in Louisville, Kentucky, in October 2019.

Mean Green Mowers’ President, Joe Conrad, introducing the ATOM, and The Kobi Company’s Chief Technology Officer, Steven Waelbers, explaining how the ATOM works. The ATOM is an autonomous battery-powered commercial ZT Mower navigated by computer vision, the first of its kind, to eliminate the landscaper’s labor problem.

Our technology in Mean Green’s 48″ NXR ZT Mower!

We incorporated our technology into one of Mean Green’s existing battery-powered ZT mowers to demonstrate the capabilities of our technology. This video was our live demonstration at the GIE Expo in Louisville, Kentucky, in October 2019. This development has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 859711.

Large and small landscapers continuously tell us it is hard to find and keep labor, let alone qualified labor. Our solution must work in collaboration with the rest of the landscaping crew. With the mowing taken care of, the team will have more time to FOCUS on other value-added and less monotonous tasks.

We will provide a machine that will offer the flexibility of staying on a large property, e.g., a football field, to get the mowing https://assaultvictimlawyer.com/buy-cialis/ done, as necessary. Crew https://sgs.nsw.edu.au/buy-levitra-online-vardenafil/ members will also be able to drive the machine on and off a truck to mow a smaller area. Our solution will create new efficiencies by reducing a two or three-man crew to a one or two-man team, respectively.

In addition to the labor shortage problem, equipment maintenance is critical to the success of any landscaper. With the ecosystem behind our technology, one of the many values for the landscaper will be predictive maintenance. The landscaper will have the ability to predict failures in real-time before they happen. This capability will minimize their machine downtime and increase their productivity by avoiding disruptions to their operations.

We aim to help mitigate the labor shortage problem facing landscapers, in addition to increasing their productivity and efficiency. The ATOM is coming…!

Press Release: The Kobi Company partners with Mean Green Mowers to release a commercial robotic ZT mower.

Mean Green Products, LLC (Mean Green Mowers), a leader in commercial electric mower manufacturing and The Kobi https://www.rossitchpediatricdentistry.com/buy-lasix-online/ CompanyTM (Kobi®), a leader in robotic solutions, are collaborating to develop a safe and affordable electric, commercial, robotic ZT mower, the ATOM. With the difficulty to find competent labor and the growing demand for more landscape services, the need for autonomous commercial mowers is now more pressing than ever. While previous commercial autonomous mowers have been developed, none have been able to meet the market expectations regarding accuracy, versatility, price, and safety until now.

Mean Green and Kobi will offer the ATOM with a return on investment measured in months instead of years. A typical landscape crew of two workers can now be reduced to one and get the same (or more) work done in a day. The fuel and maintenance savings of the ATOM and the efficiency of the KobiVision system can add up to savings of 20-30/hr.

“We are proud to be working https://www.thecourtyardclinic.co.uk/buy-viagra-sildenafil-online-uk/ with The Kobi Company to convert our latest electric mowers to quiet, zero-emission autonomous mowing machines,” said Mean Green Mowers’ President Joe Conrad. “It is a natural fit to combine our latest commercial electric mowers with high tech robotic automation”.

“We have designed our KobiVision autonomous mowing module with mower speed, accuracy, and safety in mind. By using the latest in computer vision technology and artificial intelligence, we have been able to produce a system that can easily navigate any environment, even below trees and up close to buildings,” exclaims Kobi CEO Andrew Ewen. “After years of writing code and exhaustive testing, we now have a safe and affordable autonomous solution for commercial landscape operations. We are now in the last steps before commercialization, for which we also received support from the European Union’s Horizon2020 research and innovation program”.

The ATOM was presented at the 2019 GIE Expo in Louisville, Kentucky and is expected to be ready for the market by 2021.

American Express Essentials features “Kobi” as one of the 10 Great Gardening Gadgets for Green Thumbs!

Kobi was featured on Amexessentials.com, as part of an article written by guest curator Evan Varsamis of The Gadget Flow. American Express Essentials is a website that inspires, informs and enables the lifestyle of an urban audience worldwide, promoted to millions of cardmembers all over the world. Here is the link to the article: https://www.amexessentials.com/top-high-tech-gardening-tools/

Technology Innovation Award

The Jamaica College Old Boys Association of New York, at their inaugural Griffin Awards TM. bestowed the Technology Innovation Award on the Co-Founder and C.E.O. of the Kobi Company, Andrew Ewen. Jamaica College, founded in 1795, is a prominent all-male secondary school located in Kingston, Jamaica. The award was in recognition of The Kobi Company’s https://sdarcwellness.com/online-therapy/ visionary https://sgs.nsw.edu.au/cialis-online/ role in the advancement of practical robotics and in bringing their multi-functional autonomous robot (Kobi) for yard work to the world. The event was held at the SVA Theatre in New York City on April 8th, 2017, under the patronage of Ambassador Her Excellency Audrey Marks, Jamaica’s representative to the United States.

Kobi on “Demo Day” at Start it @kbc

Kobi’s CTO, Steven Waelbers, making the pitch.

We are proud to say Kobi was one of the selected startups to pitch at the Demoday of Start-it @kbc. KBC Bank, one of the largest bank-insurers in Belgium, has brought together a number of business advisors from different fields in a community that aims to act as a valuable sounding board for innovative entrepreneurs and start-ups.

New video of Kobi

We made a new video of Kobi, click to watch it.

Kobi at the GIEEXPO

We are just back from the GIEEXPO, where we introduced Kobi to the public. Thank you to everyone who stopped at our booth to admire Kobi!

The Green Industry and Equipment Expo (GIEEXPO) is the largest trade show for outdoor power equipment, lawn and garden products, outdoor leisure equipment and light construction and landscaping equipment. The trade show is held in Louisville, Kentucky every October.

Wide press coverage of Kobi launch

Last week, we sent out our Press Release, and it has been widely picked up by the media. Check out CNN, Daily Mail, Forbes, Bloomberg, and ZDnet, to name only a few. If you search a bit, you will find dozens more.