DURHAM, N.C. – Robotic lawn mowers can take some of the work out of yard maintenance and are a futuristic solution for a traditionally time-consuming task.
Electric robotic lawn mowers have been around for 25 years, but they’re now starting to catch on as a cost-effective and eco-friendly way to cut grass. Mowbot of the Triangle has been operating for six years and is one of the first companies to pioneer this technology in the central part of the state.
“If we don't have robots, there's more grass in the United States than corn, someone's got to mow it,” Anthony Hopp with Mowbot said. “Lawn mowers are doing the jobs that people just don't seem to want to do anymore.”
If you’ve driven past the Durham Police Department lately, you might have seen some battery-powered robotic lawn mowers hard at work. It’s part of the department's Carbon Neutrality and Renewable Energy Action Plan.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, gas-powered equipment, such as lawn mowers and leaf blowers, emits 242 million tons of pollutants annually in the United States.
“Overall, it really changes the dynamic of how grass can be an important part of keeping and helping with our environmental goals,” Newman Aguiar, president of Mowbot of the Triangle, said. “A regular lawn mower, the EPA says, produces as much volatile organic compounds and noxious fumes, carbon monoxide, as 11 cars.”
The robot leaves its charging port every day to take an artificial intelligence-assisted yard inventory and mow sections of grass that need cutting. It takes the tiniest clippings off the top, so it doesn’t look or sound like it’s truly working.
“The lawn always looks mowed,” Hopp said. “It's not short when it gets cut and then tall by the end of the week and then it's short when it gets cut again. Now it's just always nice and level.”
Aguiar said this method is healthier for the grass, which suffers every time we cut half the plant body mowing it. Healthier grass makes more chlorophyll, which in turn results in cleaner air.
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Mowbot of the Triangle serves commercial properties like the Durham police and the city's parks and recreation department, along with residential customers.
One of the most common questions the company gets is about safety. The mower has sensors so that if someone or something reaches under it for any reason, it shuts off immediately.