Posted on 08/16/2002 7:00:46 AM PDT by Tancred
Robot Grass Cutter Cuts Through Tedium of Mowing Fri Aug 16, 2:18 AM ET
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Tired of mowing the lawn? New Zealand researchers say they have a device that could make your neighbors green with envy.
It's a lawnmower operated via the Internet.
The robotic grass cutter is controlled through a web page which monitors the mower by a small camera on the side of a house.
"What our technology allows us to do is to control lawnmowers and other robotic devices while people are away at work," Massey University's Glen Bright told Reuters.
The electric mower, smaller and more compact than a normal mower, moves in a sequence across the grass, stopping in places that require trimming.
It motors out once during the day and then again at night with the computer directing its every move.
The mower should be up and trimming by the end of the year and commercially available soon after that, Bright said.
The device needs physical boundaries to navigate but by the end of the year it will be able to self-navigate and adjust to different grass heights as well as carrying out gardening tasks such as soil testing, he said.
The mower was developed in collaboration with lawnmower and chainsaw company Husqvarna, part of the Sweden-based AB Electrolux home appliance maker.
The next step is an automatic vacuum cleaner, Bright said.
The significance there is that you can now hire someone in China for 10 cents an hour to mow your lawn, or clean your house. It's a stepping stone until robots are smart enough to do this themselves, for less than 10 cents per hour. Coming soon: truck and taxi drivers who sit in mud huts with internet connections.
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