Robo mowers?

[HerbJ]

I have no personal experience of  of robotic lawn mowers but today I played golf at my club in Spain and noticed they we commissioning a couple of new devices on the practice ground, when I was warming up before playing. I knew we had been using a robotic ball collection machine for past year or so, and remembered your post, so I went to look at them and talked briefly to the company representative.

 

I took a few photos of the robotic lawn mower and its sister robotic ball collector. together with their mother station, which attach. The golf club is Aloha Golf Club, a well  known private members club, which hosted the LEGENDS Tour about a month ago, and has hosted the European Tour (mens and ladies) in the past. The practice is over 250yards long and an average of 100 yards wide. It is also has steep slopes.

 

I went to the 1st Tee and one of the guys I was playing with had notice me taking photos. He lives in Aberdeen and told he has exactly the same robots at home and he  showed me the app on his phone that he uses to control it. He also told me he is involved with a local football club and they have installed the same robots for maintenance of their pitches, allowing them to release a groundsmen. He spoke highly of this device....

 

Finally, he told me that another Aloha member has two of these same robots at his home on Scotland.

 

[Crofter]

Just to update, I did eventually buy a fairly cheap robot mower... can't quite remember the model off hand. 

It was rated for something like a 40⁰ slope so I thought it would get up to the job. 

 

Well, it turned out to be a lemon. For my lawn anyway. I suppose it was too much to expect that what into recently was a field full of sheep would be flat enough for this to work. The ground clearance on the mower is very small, and the slightest bump or hollow would have it spinning round on the spot, or even worse, just getting stuck.

I put a fair bit of effort in to levelling up the perimeter so that it could always make its way home, but it never once managed to complete a full lap, let alone actually cut the main part of the lawn. I think the longest it would run without problems was about ten minutes. 

 

So in my experience, you really do need a billiard table of a lawn for this to work. But it's possible that some of the more expensive models are much better than mine.

[Andeh]

Be interesting to see what make and model it was, of all the mowers I have looked at that's one failure mode I've never come across... But then the sort of one we'd look at is at the higher cost end of the spectrum.

[Gone West]

11 hours ago, Crofter said:

It was rated for something like a 40⁰ slope so I thought it would get up to the job. 

Was it 40⁰ or 40% slope. Most of the mowers I've looked at use % for slope angle, and 40% is only 22⁰. The Kress 4x4 range will climb an 84% or 40⁰ slope, but they're not cheap.

[Iceverge]

I have a basic cheap flymo from about 10 years ago.

 

It works fine on a flat lawn. I never bothered switching it off. Let it run all winter in the old house. I never got around to installing it in new build. 

 

It will get stuck in any hole bigger than a cup. One thing to be careful of is the mowing height. Too low and the grass will get weak and the leather jackets will have a field day.

 

 

[Crofter]

2 hours ago, Gone West said:

Was it 40⁰ or 40% slope. Most of the mowers I've looked at use % for slope angle, and 40% is only 22⁰. The Kress 4x4 range will climb an 84% or 40⁰ slope, but they're not cheap.

Maybe it was %. The slope has never been a problem. It's the almost imperceptible little bumps and dips that stop it. 

 

These mower companies should sell a little radio controlled toy car that has the same ground clearance as their mowers, then you could drive it around and find all the problems on your lawn. Much quicker than standing watching the mower bumbling around.

[Oz07]

18 hours ago, HerbJ said:

allowing them to release a groundsmen.

 

AI even coming for the blue collar jobs now