Innovators in the Autonomous Lawn Mower Realm

As I’ve been working on the mower project, I find myself returning to a few blogs and websites to see how other people are trying to automate lawn mowers. It’s fun seeing different solutions to the problem, and I use their successes and failures to spur my own creativity.

This is a list of innovators that I’m aware of in the autonomous lawn mower realm. If you know of some folks that I haven’t found yet, post a comment and I’ll add them to this list!

MowBotix

These guys had automated a fully autonomous riding lawn mower back in 2017, so I think they win the prize for first large scale autonomous lawn mower. They went silent about a year ago and recently posted on their blog that they’re moving toward a more holistic terrestrial software solution that isn’t just for mowers.

Greenzie

Every once in a while I’ll do a Google search for “autonomous lawn mower” to see what I can find. That was how I found the folks out at Greenzie. They appear to be taking the same approach MowBotix did: start with a riding lawn mower and retrofit it with a suite of electronics and sensors. Their solution looks a lot more robust than MowBotix’s, but also quite a bit more expensive. Their Twitter account is a fun time, lots of cool demonstration videos.

Left Hand Robotics

As far as I can tell, the folks over at Left Hand Robotics started out trying to make an automated snow plow. Based in Longmont, Colorado, I’m sure that’s a very welcome solution. It appears they took their snow plow platform and put a mower deck on the front. Voila! Instant mowing platform.

The downside? It appears these bad boys cost an arm and a leg. Or perhaps just a left hand? I’ll show myself the door. This source says their snow plow solution costs $55,000 and has an annual subscription fee of $4,250. However, for that price I’m sure the system works very well. Their videos are quite impressive.

Deep South Robotics

Robo Robby over at Deep South Robotics has a full up riding mower automated with linear actuators to run the steering arms. With his software and hardware chops it appears to be a very robust solution. I admire his willingness to share his methods along with his successes and failures. The comments on his blog are quite informative. Every time he posts, I learn something new.

Evatech

Well, kind of. Evatech makes a series of radio controled lawn mowers, and BitDog from the ardupilot forums took one and added some special sauce to automate it. I admire the simplicity of this solution. It seems to be quite plug and play. But I’m left wondering why Evatech doesn’t take the leap and automate their platform themselves. Their machines are on the pricy side, but being gas powered are probably pretty reliable.

Kenny Trussell

Kenny was the first person I know of (other than possibly the folks at MowBotix) that used an RTK GPS system on a riding lawn mower. He continues to improve his mower, and I look forward to some updates of his progress soon! Kenny shared a very useful waypoint generation program for creating a mower mission in Mission Planner. If I ever get my mower finished, I will likely be trying it.

The Ardupilot Forum

There are quite a few folks on the Ardupilot forum that are working on their own solutions. I won’t post names here, but a cursory search will bring up several of them.

Mean Green Mowers

These guys have partnered with a company called Kobi to build an autonomous robot whose anatomy looks surprisingly familiar. I think the solar panel is a bit over the top though. When your deck motors pull multiple kW’s of power, a 200W solar panel isn’t going to be very helpful in my opinion. But it’s great marketing, especially when your company has “green” in the name.

One thing is for sure, it’s an exciting time to be working on autonomous lawn mowers!