We thought the rider fell off or something and it was going to crash. Then it turned and kept mowing. Park Roomba!
First thing I thought of was "Maximum Overdrive ". Loved that movie when I was a kid.
“You sure make love like a hero.”
“This machine just called me an asshole.”
Parkba!
Never seen a gas powered automatic lawnmower, only electric ones.
This is the size of a huge riding mower you only see used by parks departments and the like.
It is a “zero-turn” mower. Best suited for larger lawns as they can cover large areas more easily. And of course they are more nimble.
They have a larger cutting area than lawn-tractors, but smaller than brush-hog style mowers that attach to the PTO connection on a tractor. We have all three which get used for different scenarios.
My dog is super fascinated by lawn mower robots. Every time we see one he has to stand and watch for a couple of minutes. I wonder how he’d react to one of this size. Interestingly, he doesn’t care much for our robot vacuum. For the most part he avoids it, sometimes he lays down in its way and freaks out when it bumps into him.
My crazy dog has always wanted to bite the push mower whenever it moves. I suspect he thinks it growls at him. He’s fine until it starts moving, then he goes crazy. Naturally he’s contained for his safety when mowing takes place.
Ooh. Is it like aggressive or playful? My dog gets a mix of playful and scared when the proper vacuum comes out and I suspect it’s because it “stands” in that front down back up playful position, and then howls like a banshee.
Keeping both of our boys away from mowers sounds like a good idea haha.
It’s sorta playful, but seems like it could get out of hand. Mostly goes for the wheels. The playbow must be a powerful piece of dog language. There’s a consistent misunderstanding when anybody tries to tie their shoes here.
Yes!
Are these the immigrants that are stealing all our jobs?
This is what people should be fearing. Studies have shown that when immigrants come in and “take jobs”, they pay taxes, and buy goods to create a life here, effectively replacing the job they took (since we need people who make beds for them to sleep in, food for them to eat, etc).
This is automation that’s ACTUALLY taking our jobs. This automation doesn’t pay taxes, and doesn’t replace the job it takes.
I don’t fear this. Automate EVERYTHING NOW
Speak for yourself. I still want to jerk off manually.
Switches jerk off machine from auto to manual.
100% let’s do this.
Very true, but let’s also keep in mind that automation doesn’t have to be a social evil. If our economic and political systems were better oriented toward lifting up society’s disadvantaged and keeping extreme individual/family wealth in check, automation could benefit all. With better social safety nets (or a UBI), government-sponsored job training (perhaps paid for by taxes on automation), and incentives for starting small businesses, automation could mean less human drudgery in the workforce, and more efficient economic outcomes for all.
I’m not optimistic about that given our track record as a species, but it’s possible.
TL;DR: automated production is good if and only if the people own the means.
If we can fight the owners to keep our shitty back breaking jobs and win, we should have fought the owners to rebuild our economy to benefit the people from the bottom up.
If we the peasant masses even can win against the tiny owner class oligarchs, lets fight for the right thing. And if we can’t, well then it’s all masturbation anyway and they’ll do what they want.
It’s irrational to fight for “we demand to continue to break our backs making your shit so we can continue to subsist on menial laborer wages with broken backs!” in any event.
Unfortunately the system has laid the framework for it to destroy itself when automation becomes ubiquitous. Imagine if y2k was inevitable but the engineers who’s jobs to fix it hands were tied by the software company’s forcing them to install more and more bugged software.
I wish you were wrong, but unfortunately I think I agree with you.
You sure the automation doesn’t pay taxes…?
I have heard an idea floated around that the companies that make these types of automation devices would pay massive taxes on them, and that tax would pay for UBI. I’m not sure how the math works, but to me that sounds like the ultimate endgame. Then we can all enjoy our lives without needing to do tedious or backbreaking work.
Absolutely it’s the best way forward. The catch is that it’s hard to calculate. If I write an app that saves someone 3 minutes of each work day, how much am I taxed on what I automated? We can just tax the rich, and assume they automate away everyone’s jobs.
They took our jerbs!
Throw a tennis ball in its path and see what happens. It must be safe, right? Right‽
Mowing over a tennis ball isn’t harmful, I don’t see what this would prove.
Depends who you ask, eh. If your tiny pet gets underneath there it’s gonna be a bad day.
You really shouldn’t be taking your hamster to the park in the first place.
True.
How about my foot while I’m having a lie down? Would that be safe?
Make sure your foot stays close to the rest of your body. If your foot is sitting out in the middle of the grass by itself you’re already in serious trouble without the lawnmower being involved.
God, I always do that, don’t I. Nevermind. I need to get myself together.
Fortunately, most animals do not willingly go anywhere near running combustion engines.
That is fortunate.
Well, not anymore. /s
The tennis ball is just an analog for anything actually harmful. Testing its object detection without creating genuine hazards.
I was going to make a morbid joke about the driver having already fallen off and into the blades before you took the photo, but the fact that there’s no seat on that mower defeated that plan.
Happy Wheels?
It’s an old flash game where falling off of your lawnmower and getting mown by it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.
Ahh, ok, lol. Yeah, never played it. Thanks for sharing.
The lack of seat is why they fell off!
I was there with a group of parents and kids for a teen meetup. We did think he fell off at first. Then it turned by itself and we were all like “wtf?”
Well I’m glad it ended up being automated.
In this particular instance, I am sort of indifferent about it, because I don’t think sitting on a riding mower is an especially taxing job and the guy still had to be there to put it in the right place and make sure nothing went wrong.
I’m guessing its mortal enemy is the beach towel.
Reminds me of this meme:
How many mowers do you think you could get your hands on before they catch you?
Probably one. I would imagine they have some kind of GPS on these.
You can see the little disks antenna on top.
I don’t know that I could fit it in my car.
we can prob balance it on my skate board and we can tow it.
Literally Lawnmower Man.
That’s one expensive goat.
Took ‘er jerbs
My curiosity got the best of me, here’s the link to Wright: https://www.wrightmfg.com/products/mowers/commercial/stand-on/robotic-zk/
The Mower 40HP Vanguard Engine Hydro-Gear Smartec Drive-By-Wire 12cc 15.5 Gallon Fuel Capacity Centimeter-level accurate RTK GPS Commercial-grade Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) Depth-sensing object detection cameras Rock-solid wireless emergency stop Remote control mode Live Greenzie support: Call for support while in the field for real-time fixes. The Software Mow the boundary once, and the mower fills in the rest Remembers maps and can repeat them when you come back. Just place it in the previous boundary. Create no-go zones that will be saved with your map to avoid hitting hard-to-see obstacles like drain covers or small pipes sticking out of the ground. Record and repeat: Record yourself mowing the entire property, and the mower will replicate your movement. Manage the mower with the controller or a smart device in real-time. Advanced fleet support: See how your fleet is performing. Replay entire jobs, not just a dot on the map. Run multiple units at once. Set the stripe angle (for those stunning cross-hatch patterns) Seamless automatic updates
I built an autosteer called AgOpenGPS for our tractors that pretty much does this. Cost about $1000 per unit. We still sit in the tractor because there’s a hell of a lot going on besides steering the tractor, but it will drive the entire field without intervention.
Damn, $45k. Though I guess for something like a park it probably has a pretty quick ROI.
If you want one for your own yard, there are significantly cheaper options. The husqvarna automower is under $1000 and can be integrated into Home Assistant. I’ve seen a lot of positive opinions about it in the HA communities
Nah, my yard is tiny and I don’t mind mowing it. I have a Ryobi battery mower so it’s super-easy to do. If I ever move somewhere with a bigger yard though I would seriously consider it. Especially as I already have Home Assistant running!
I’m about to move into my first home with a yard and I’ve been debating it. I have terrible allergies and even though I really wanted to as a kid, I couldn’t mow the lawn because I’d have snot running down my face half way through.
I haven’t had a reason to try again for a couple decades but I was gifted a mower so I’m gonna try doing it myself this summer. If it’s bad and I can’t find a local kid to hire, automower it is!
Oh my allergies are horrible too, I just make sure to take a Sudafed (can’t recall the generic name) before I start. I love that stuff, we always keep a stash around especially as you have to get it from the pharmacy and they don’t keep very much stock it seems.
Ohh Sudafed and I are already well acquainted lol
But if I have to take drugs just to mow the lawn, I’m definitely looking at alternatives.
Hello fellow Ryobi mower owner. Or as I call it, my $500 gym membership.
I have a big old ride on mower as well but hate all the noise and the smell of exhaust, so rather just take three times as long pushing the Ryobi about.
Nothing quite like the satisfying thwack when it eats a small blackberry bush or snaps a runaway wysteria tendril.
At least the Ryobi is super-lightweight! I can easily carry it out of my garage and even with the battery it’s far lighter to push around than a gas mower. I’m hard on blades though with so many sticks and pine cones, no matter how many I pick up I always miss some.
I agree nice and light.
It’s not really equivalent to a gym membership, although I have to do a fair bit of Hungy Hippo’ing if I leave it for too long.
Yeah, there’s a $600 model where you have to put in wire and the lowest price RTK is about $1k. I’ve got people in my neighborhood with both and they’ve both said good things about it.
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Depends on how much maintenance it requires. And someone is going to need to be paid to deploy it and watch it to ensure that nobody fucks with it and that it doesn’t eat some park sunbather or something. And to make sure the grounds are clear of debris. Etc.
Don’t think you can count on just removing a salary here.
If a park sunbather gets eaten by a mower, did it really happen?
The lower price for 600m² I saw here is 200$. It’s very cheap.
Okay somehow the words rock solid wireless emergency stop seem oxymoronic. I don’t care how it was programmed what wireless communication system uses or anything else. I have a hard time believing wireless emergency stops can be foolproof.
At a quick glance on that site I didn’t see any information about safety. Did you come across anything?
I guess there is the line about object sensors, but would like to know a little more before deploying something with rotating blades (which is still pretty cool, don’t get me wrong)
And can it avoid running over trash? Because if they automate the mowing you better believe nobody is out picking up the trash before mowing. And are they paying someone to ensure nobody vandalizes the machine so the cost savings is moot.
Well hopefully they bought one of those flame throwing robot dogs that sits crouching in the woods in case someone tries to spray paint a penis on this thing.
It’s very safe. Any orphans caught in the blades won’t do any harm to the mower.
You in the US?
Robot lawn mowers are very common in Europe. You’ll see these small electric mowers in people’s yards all over the place. Businesses also have them running all day out front. Never seen one in the US.
They are equipped with GPS, so they are locked to a specific area to prevent theft.
Probably don’t use them here in the US because they’re afraid people will use them for target practice.
Or maybe all the landscaping companies just have more advanced lobbying capabilities than I thought.
I am in the U.S., yes.
GPS are very fancy ones, unless that’s changed since I last looked into it. A buried wire, “invisible fence”, has been the norm for all consumer grade ones I’ve seen.
That’s the style we have as well. In addition to the wire it also detects if it bumps into walls.
The ones I have seen are GPS locked and they automatically “return home” to the charger when rain drops are detected.
I think the wire ones usually do too. When they’re out of power and possibly if it rains, they go straight until they reach the wire, and then follow it home to dock.
Yes, I believe the GPS ones are also guided by a wire to find edges and find their way home. The GPS is mostly for theft prevention. Won’t work outside a specific area unless it’s unlocked from the backend.
I saw this for the first time in Brussels! Our Airbnb host got a kick over how enthralled 3 American women were over the idea of a lawn roomba 😂.
It’s more likely remote controlled. There’s probably a guy with a controller near by. They’ve been around for a couple of decades now, but are generally only used where an angle is too steep or too close to a highway or cliff face.
From another reply:
https://www.wrightmfg.com/products/mowers/commercial/stand-on/robotic-zk/
Seems it’s fully Self-driving (at least, following a map/defined boundaries)
There was a guy who brought it over, but he was not using a remote control. It was automated.
I don’t get it, don’t you guys have a lawn bot at home? Who in their right mind would mow their lawn by hand these days? Sure, this is scaled up by a considerate amount, but its the same technology (though I imagine this boy uses beacons for navigation as opposed to gps or wire).
We have 1 1/2 acres. Mowing it by hand, even with a self-propelled mower, sucks. Especially in August. If we could afford a lawn bot, we’d definitely get one.
Ok, that’s quite a lot, wow! Consumer grade bots won’t cut it. You’d need at least 3 of them to make it work somehow.
