The Roomba for your Lawn

Robotically controlled lawn mowers are creeping into the home lawn care world, but what does the future look like for autonomous mowers on golf courses?

Tired of mowing your lawn at home? Need to free up a little more time for golf? If so, you’ll like the future of lawn care and where it is headed. Just as the revolution of home cleaning involved automating vacuum cleaners, so too does the lawn care reinvention. This has led us to the veritable Roomba for your lawn: autonomous mowers.

These autonomous mowers are robotically controlled mowers which you can program to maintain your home lawn. This small mower will continually mow your lawn throughout the week in a random pattern and your lawn will never look shaggy. It can even mow at night and recharge itself. Autonomous mowers for home use are finally becoming a reality and this technology has already started spilling over into the golf market as well, making it an attractive asset for country clubs.

The technological path to get to this point has been a long one, though. Back in 1969, when the first robotic mower called MowBot, was patented and introduced, modern suburbia’s home lawn care had become more and more important. Although the MowBot was groundbreaking, the technology was lacking and the mass production of the product wasn’t a reality at the time. Fast forward to the modern era in the US and the lawn and garden market has transformed into a 10 billion dollar industry. When you combine today’s improved technology with an affordable price point, it’s safe to say autonomous mowers will impact the market in a large way very soon. The modern transition to more time-crunched homeowners, who have to juggle work with kids, drives the need as well.

The autonomous mower movement has already started to emerge in Europe. The John Deere Tango E5 is an electric battery-powered unit that can mow an area of up to about 19,300 square feet, just shy of a half-acre. Set-up is easy with a boundary established by a pre-installed wire, all you have to do is switch on the automated mower and watch as it travels around in a random pattern, cutting your entire lawn.

You also need not worry about your prized flowers getting the chop, as the Tango 5 can be programmed to avoid predetermined areas such as flowerbeds. Recharging your autonomous mower also isn’t a concern as when the mower detects that its battery is low, it drives itself back to its charging station. Once fully charged, it returns to its previous task from its docking station which is adjacent to your home. If theft is a concern, these units are programmed and use GPS software to only work at your home.

While all of these features sound wonderful, the drawback is that these autonomous mowers do not contain a bag to collect the clippings. If your lawn is really long, once the job is done, grass cuttings will be everywhere. In this case, this iteration of the automatic mower is really only ideal for those who like to keep their lawn neat and tidy at all times, a feat which is completely doable with the mower’s automatic deployment.

Unfortunately, John Deere Tango E5 is only available in Europe, specifically Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland. But with the US being the home of the John Deere Corporation, it is surely only a matter of time before we see the John Deere model state-side. The industry is so close to completely accepting autonomous home lawn mowers, and developing reliable and top of the line technology. But how does this technology look for affecting golf course maintenance in in the future?

In the fall of 2017, UCC made a large equipment purchase with Toro which included four new walking greens mowers. These new Flex 21 units are considered to be the top of line in the golf market with the latest and greatest technology, including free floating reel heads which contour to the green. The improved cut and operator friendly controls made the decision fairly easy in purchasing the units.

But while these mowers are the latest technology in walking mowers, they are behind the times when discussing autonomous technology. Before the purchase of the current mowers, UCC researched purchasing RG3 autonomous greens mowers from Cub Cadet. The backstory of this technology involved a company called Precise Path Robotic, originally started in the early 2000’s by a group of Purdue engineers. They were trying to develop a mower and technology with the idea that it would be strictly for the golf industry, with the possibility to move it to the home lawn market. After years of development, the original prototype hadn’t changed much because the financial backing was running out. In February of 2015, MTD/Cub Cadet purchased the company and has been able to give the mower the financial boost it needed to get the product, now called the RG3, off the ground and into the golf course industry.

We looked into purchasing three to four RG3 units, but the unit cost plus installation cost of a guidance wire was cost prohibitive. There was also some room for improvement and once it went into the market there would inevitably be flaws and hiccups to iron out.

As the technology improves and other key distributors like Toro, John Deere and Jacobsen launch projects it will only drive the market toward robotic mowers. Autonomous mowers will give superintendents another option to maintain their golf course at a higher level while saving labor dollars.

Autonomous mowers eliminate scalped collars, curving lines while freeing up labor to do other things. One single operator will be able to handle 2 units while raking bunkers, changing cups or other small tasks.

While it doesn’t eliminate labor totally, it definitely can trim substantial labor dollars out of the budget or reallocate those funds to other areas or improvements to the golf course. There is currently an autonomous fairway unit developed in Portugal. This unit can be brought out to the first hole selected, mow whatever is programmed and return home after completing the selected fairways as well.

Once autonomous mowers are switched over to a GPS guided system, they will certainly take over the golf market. GPS technology has improved to the point where it works within a small fraction of an inch which is needed to make autonomous mowers operate correctly. It’s only a matter of time before the big players of Toro and John Deere drive the future of the autonomous market both in golf and home lawn care.

Although we have new greens mowers for the start of the 2018 season, there is a very good chance they will be the last units which will require a human operator while cutting.

Perhaps in the future golf courses will have teams of autonomous mowers leave the maintenance shop in evenings and mornings maintaining 90 percent of the mowed playing surfaces. Crews of 15-20 employees could be be trimmed in half and the focus would be on detail work, bunkers, cup changing and pesticide applications. It’s exciting to see the new direction of golf course maintenance, because as demands and course conditioning are elevated to new levels, superintendents will need to rely on technology to help control rising maintenance costs.