robotic lawn mowers?

[engineheat]

Hi,

Are robotic lawn mowers cheap enough/good enough yet? I got a big lawn and would love to cut down on the mowing task. I'm even thinking about modifying my conventional lawn mower (self propelled) to allow it to mow on its own. I'm not talking any fancy AI vision, just some dumb programming to make it mow a largely rectangular area.

any advice?

thanks

[wilfred]

No, and, No.  They are best suited for smaller flatter and fewer "obstacles". Obstacles being anything other than the next blade of grass. You need to lay wire to mark out the boundary and that makes getting to the very edge problematic and then you have long uncut grass you'll be trimming. Then there is the nature strip out front and the possibility of it getting pinched, albeit without the charging station.

I think they are best for people who really like the always mown look. And still don't mind fiddling around the edges.

If you can afford one then you probably can afford to pay someone to mow the lawns.

[mathsquid]

I don't have any advice, but this article might be interesting to you, if a bit dated.

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Radio-Electronics/90s/1990/Radio-Electronics-1990-06.pdf

[NiHaoMike]

Wouldn't it be fairly simple and cheap to add some wheelchair motors or large R/C car motors to a regular mower along with a R/C receiver? Then you can control it from indoors.

[Brumby]

You'd have to make it FPV.   

[RoGeorge]

How about not even the dumb programming required?



 

[Mr. Scram]

Wouldn't it be fairly simple and cheap to add some wheelchair motors or large R/C car motors to a regular mower along with a R/C receiver? Then you can control it from indoors.

That sounds far from trivial and the point is not having to control it.

[Marco]

Most seem roomba like random walkers with a wire fence to box them in. Hackaday had a discussion about doing it with dGPS a few years back.

[GlennSprigg]

About 13-14 years after my first child was conceived, I seemed to have acquired
a semi-autonomous creation to do the lawn-mowing for me !!   
Unfortunately, it suffered from regular System Failures, requiring Re-Booting!!   

[m3vuv]

just get a couple of sheep,job done!