Robot lawn mowers are nothing new. In fact they’ve been around since the mid-1990s when the very first commercially available models from Swedish brand Husqvarna emerged as a niche luxury for tech enthusiasts. However, what began as a very simple concept of having a dumb robot guided by buried boundary wire has rapidly evolved during the past two years into a sophisticated ecosystem of autonomous wire-free machines that can not only navigate a lawn and its borders using centimetre-accurate GPS and high-definition cameras, but cut lawns in beautiful parallel stripes while avoiding obstacles like furniture and toys.
Wired robot models are still widely available today – and some are featured in T3’s guide to the best robot lawn mowers – but I’m here to tell you that the time has come to consider avoiding this comparatively unintelligent form of robotics in favour of embracing the wonders of AI-empowered RTK GPS and camera navigation, impressive obstacle avoidance and app-controlled simplicity.
