We thought the rider fell off or something and it was going to crash. Then it turned and kept mowing. Park Roomba!
Another picture:
Automation isn’t the enemy.
As ever, the owner class that hoards and wages economic war on you though automation for their exclusive benefit at their society’s expense are your enemy, whether you would fight them or not.
Arguing that we should “save” back breaking, repetitive unnatural movement, manual labor jobs that break human bodies by the time they’re 40 is the WRONG hill to die on. Fight for the citizenry to reap the benefits of automation through taxation, not to keep shitty jobs robots can do faster and better. Fight to change the economy so that everyone doesn’t need meaningless jobs machines can do better so we can have actual time to live our lives.
Taxing the fuck out of automation would let everyone win, because a heavily taxed robot is still far cheaper for the company than a human or possibly several humans for that one robot would be, so automation is here either way. We can riot to change our economy to benefit from this technology as we should, or we can be steamrolled yet again by the dictates of the affluent who will demand and get all the benefits and none of the responsibility if not confronted and countered on revolutionary terms.
Please pick the former. There’s no dignity or meaning to be had shuffling boxes around in an Amazon warehouse. Begging the owners to let us try to continue to compete with literal purpose built repetitive labor machines is not the way.
Now do AI!
Fun fact: The Luddites weren’t opposed to technology. In many cases, they built the machines they would later destroy.
What they opposed was the ownership structure. The fact that they could be 30x more productive, yet be paid less than before because the required skill level was lower, and the working conditions were now dangerous and demeaning.
Yet when someone says “luddite” now, what do you think? A dummy who’s afraid of having cool stuff?
Put the corporate tax rate back up to 40% or more and implement a 10% robot tax on top of that. Then after that, implement a UBI starting at $1000 a month for US citizens with no strings attached, increasing with inflation over time. Solved for the next decade.
The top marginal tax rate should be 100%. The bottom marginal tax rate should be negative.
Good points, but I have one thing to add. You shouldn’t tax automation. You should increase corporate taxes for all companies. If you funded a UBI with that, it would solve lots of unemployment related problems: crime, poverty, etc. But it’s hard, simple but hard.
It’s too bad that the first things to be automated are the tasks that people don’t mind doing, leaving the real shitty tasks to be done by people. Riding around on a lawnmower has to be one of the most enjoyable forms of manual labour. Now the robots get the good jobs and we’re left with the backbreaking monotonous bullshit.
Are these the immigrants that are stealing all our jobs?
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This is what people should be fearing. Studies have shown that when immigrants come in and “take jobs”, they pay taxes, and buy goods to create a life here, effectively replacing the job they took (since we need people who make beds for them to sleep in, food for them to eat, etc).
This is automation that’s ACTUALLY taking our jobs. This automation doesn’t pay taxes, and doesn’t replace the job it takes.
I don’t fear this. Automate EVERYTHING NOW
Speak for yourself. I still want to jerk off manually.
Switches jerk off machine from auto to manual.
100% let’s do this.
You sure the automation doesn’t pay taxes…?
Very true, but let’s also keep in mind that automation doesn’t have to be a social evil. If our economic and political systems were better oriented toward lifting up society’s disadvantaged and keeping extreme individual/family wealth in check, automation could benefit all. With better social safety nets (or a UBI), government-sponsored job training (perhaps paid for by taxes on automation), and incentives for starting small businesses, automation could mean less human drudgery in the workforce, and more efficient economic outcomes for all.
I’m not optimistic about that given our track record as a species, but it’s possible.
TL;DR: automated production is good if and only if the people own the means.
If we can fight the owners to keep our shitty back breaking jobs and win, we should have fought the owners to rebuild our economy for automation profits to largely benefit the people from the bottom up.
If we the peasant masses even can win against the tiny owner class oligarchs, lets fight for the right thing. And if we can’t win, well then it’s all masturbation anyway and they’ll do what they want.
It’s irrational to fight for “we demand to continue to break our backs making your shit instead of robots so we can continue to subsist on menial laborer wages with broken backs!” in any event. That’s some coal miner excuse for logic.
Unfortunately the system has laid the framework for it to destroy itself when automation becomes ubiquitous. Imagine if y2k was inevitable but the engineers who’s jobs it was to fix it hands were tied by the software company’s forcing them to install more and more bugged software.
I wish you were wrong, but unfortunately I think I agree with you.
I have heard an idea floated around that the companies that make these types of automation devices would pay massive taxes on them, and that tax would pay for UBI. I’m not sure how the math works, but to me that sounds like the ultimate endgame. Then we can all enjoy our lives without needing to do tedious or backbreaking work.
Absolutely it’s the best way forward. The catch is that it’s hard to calculate. If I write an app that saves someone 3 minutes of each work day, how much am I taxed on what I automated? We can just tax the rich, and assume they automate away everyone’s jobs.
My curiosity got the best of me, here’s the link to Wright: https://www.wrightmfg.com/products/mowers/commercial/stand-on/robotic-zk/
The Mower
- 40HP Vanguard Engine
- Hydro-Gear Smartec Drive-By-Wire 12cc
- 15.5 Gallon Fuel Capacity
- Centimeter-level accurate RTK GPS
- Commercial-grade Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)
- Depth-sensing object detection cameras
- Rock-solid wireless emergency stop
- Remote control mode
- Live Greenzie support: Call for support while in the field for real-time fixes.
The Software
- Mow the boundary once, and the mower fills in the rest
- Remembers maps and can repeat them when you come back. Just place it in the previous boundary.
- Create no-go zones that will be saved with your map to avoid hitting hard-to-see obstacles like drain covers or small pipes sticking out of the ground.
- Record and repeat: Record yourself mowing the entire property, and the mower will replicate your movement.
- Manage the mower with the controller or a smart device in real-time.
- Advanced fleet support: See how your fleet is performing. Replay entire jobs, not just a dot on the map.
- Run multiple units at once.
- Set the stripe angle (for those stunning cross-hatch patterns)
- Seamless automatic updates
Damn, $45k. Though I guess for something like a park it probably has a pretty quick ROI.
If you want one for your own yard, there are significantly cheaper options. The husqvarna automower is under $1000 and can be integrated into Home Assistant. I’ve seen a lot of positive opinions about it in the HA communities
Yeah, there’s a $600 model where you have to put in wire and the lowest price RTK is about $1k. I’ve got people in my neighborhood with both and they’ve both said good things about it.
Nah, my yard is tiny and I don’t mind mowing it. I have a Ryobi battery mower so it’s super-easy to do. If I ever move somewhere with a bigger yard though I would seriously consider it. Especially as I already have Home Assistant running!
Hello fellow Ryobi mower owner. Or as I call it, my $500 gym membership.
I have a big old ride on mower as well but hate all the noise and the smell of exhaust, so rather just take three times as long pushing the Ryobi about.
Nothing quite like the satisfying thwack when it eats a small blackberry bush or snaps a runaway wysteria tendril.
At least the Ryobi is super-lightweight! I can easily carry it out of my garage and even with the battery it’s far lighter to push around than a gas mower. I’m hard on blades though with so many sticks and pine cones, no matter how many I pick up I always miss some.
I agree nice and light.
It’s not really equivalent to a gym membership, although I have to do a fair bit of Hungy Hippo’ing if I leave it for too long.
I’m about to move into my first home with a yard and I’ve been debating it. I have terrible allergies and even though I really wanted to as a kid, I couldn’t mow the lawn because I’d have snot running down my face half way through.
I haven’t had a reason to try again for a couple decades but I was gifted a mower so I’m gonna try doing it myself this summer. If it’s bad and I can’t find a local kid to hire, automower it is!
Oh my allergies are horrible too, I just make sure to take a Sudafed (can’t recall the generic name) before I start. I love that stuff, we always keep a stash around especially as you have to get it from the pharmacy and they don’t keep very much stock it seems.
Ohh Sudafed and I are already well acquainted lol
But if I have to take drugs just to mow the lawn, I’m definitely looking at alternatives.
The lower price for 600m² I saw here is 200$. It’s very cheap.
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Depends on how much maintenance it requires. And someone is going to need to be paid to deploy it and watch it to ensure that nobody fucks with it and that it doesn’t eat some park sunbather or something. And to make sure the grounds are clear of debris. Etc.
Don’t think you can count on just removing a salary here.
If a park sunbather gets eaten by a mower, did it really happen?
A second robot deploys to clean out the leaves and dead bodies.
At a quick glance on that site I didn’t see any information about safety. Did you come across anything?
I guess there is the line about object sensors, but would like to know a little more before deploying something with rotating blades (which is still pretty cool, don’t get me wrong)
And can it avoid running over trash? Because if they automate the mowing you better believe nobody is out picking up the trash before mowing. And are they paying someone to ensure nobody vandalizes the machine so the cost savings is moot.
Well hopefully they bought one of those flame throwing robot dogs that sits crouching in the woods in case someone tries to spray paint a penis on this thing.
It’s very safe. Any orphans caught in the blades won’t do any harm to the mower.
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We know they can’t. Unfortunately the target demographic for this mower probably doesn’t care if the e-stop works.
I built an autosteer called AgOpenGPS for our tractors that pretty much does this. Cost about $1000 per unit. We still sit in the tractor because there’s a hell of a lot going on besides steering the tractor, but it will drive the entire field without intervention.
Fields generally have few, if any, objects to consider. I’m not sure this is comparable.
It’s more likely remote controlled. There’s probably a guy with a controller near by. They’ve been around for a couple of decades now, but are generally only used where an angle is too steep or too close to a highway or cliff face.
There was a guy who brought it over, but he was not using a remote control. It was automated.
From another reply:
https://www.wrightmfg.com/products/mowers/commercial/stand-on/robotic-zk/
Seems it’s fully Self-driving (at least, following a map/defined boundaries)
I don’t get it, don’t you guys have a lawn bot at home? Who in their right mind would mow their lawn by hand these days? Sure, this is scaled up by a considerate amount, but its the same technology (though I imagine this boy uses beacons for navigation as opposed to gps or wire).
We have 1 1/2 acres. Mowing it by hand, even with a self-propelled mower, sucks. Especially in August. If we could afford a lawn bot, we’d definitely get one.
Ok, that’s quite a lot, wow! Consumer grade bots won’t cut it. You’d need at least 3 of them to make it work somehow.
Literally Lawnmower Man.
Took ‘er jerbs
Parkba!
For the curious https://youtu.be/t1__h7vnnKY?si=K-RBu5beMPJYNNMn
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/t1__h7vnnKY?si=K-RBu5beMPJYNNMn
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Starts of nice and calmly, then the editor goes full on with the metal music thrashing for the title sequence. What a trip!
“Charles, where’d the puppy go?” Sees this thing
Cricket‽
Tactical EMP’s are necessary now.
that mechine can throw rocks hundreds of feet. Did it shut itself down like safety demands when you are that close?
I didn’t want to get close enough to find out.
Could you try throwing rocks in front of it to find out?
Could I? Yes. Would I? I’d prefer to keep myself out of legal trouble.
What is the precedent for persecuting a squid, in your jurisdiction?
this squid persecution has to stop
I don’t know, but I’m guessing throwing a rock at a robot lawn mower and having it knock it away and across the park and hit some six-year-old on the playground might be frowned upon even if a mollusc does it.
that’s not a fucking combusion engine is it? a robot mower that runs on gasoline would be the stupidest thing i’ve seen in a while.
It is a combustion engine for sure.
Why?
You can’t automate them getting gas without serious safety risks.
Which you can do with electricity.
Meaning, you still will need someone to go around with a gas can to make sure they are all running.
Pure electric mowers have gotten really good. Even for a more industrial-sized mower like that which covers a lot of land, there’s not much reason that any new mower should be gas.
When it comes to robot mowers, all the more so. Even if it can’t handle the entire area all at once, that’s OK, it’s a robot. Program it to do one area, go back to charge, then do another.
Why does the fact that it is riderless have anything to do with it being combustion powered or not. How are those two things connected.
See the second paragraph. It changes the entire approach to mowing.
(Though I’m headed towards natural lawns that don’t need this kind of maintenance at all.)
It doesn’t look like this is dedicated to one lawn. It looks like it is meant to be moved from place to place, to provide a service.
Then you have plenty of opportunity to do battery swaps as part of the usual setup. Or charging it with an inverter in the truck in between jobs.
Yeah. The whole idea of growing something, watering it, fertilizing and caring for it, so you can chop it down is pretty crazy.
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Consumer electric mowers favor have independent motors for each blade
Big blades are unnecessary with robot mowers. I’m sure there are examples of it, especially in the bigger zero turn mowers that are probably retrofits of existing riding models, but there’s actually a simpler approach that works with how automation changes the way it’s done.
When you’re mowing every day with a robot, you only need to clip a little bit each day. When you do that, you don’t need a big heavy blade. Many of those robot mowers have nothing more than a wheel with three or four razor blades screwed on at the edge. They aren’t going to hit something heavy, because again, it’s doing it every day and keeping everything trimmed all the time. It’s safer, too.
When I’ve talked about my own robot mower at home to friends and neighbors, the thing people have trouble getting over is how you don’t just do what you’ve been doing, only robot. I tell them it trims a small amount every day, and they snicker a little. Then they think about it for a moment and it makes sense.
This cascades down to how the lawn is handled by services. Instead of trying to do the current system, only robot, change the approach. Even if each park isn’t going to have its own mower, there can be one truck delivering mowers all over town. Perhaps there are other models that would end up working better, but the point is that swapping out the current equipment for a robot version isn’t the way to think about it.
The controller board should scale up without a big jump in cost. A larger zero turn mower doesn’t need a significantly different controller to a residential mower. A big cost on those is the GPS sensor. It has to be a relatively high accuracy one for it to work, and that ability has only come down to <$300 in the last few years (it used to be “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” territory). Otherwise, it has to use a boundary wire or something like that, which is the biggest downfall of the one I have. Boundary wires suck.
Once it has enough circuitry to handle the sensors–a larger mower probably needs a few more, but not a huge amount–then it’s good enough. Even if it adds $600 to the cost of a residential mower, it may only add $700 to a big zero turn. Cost gets proportionately less as the mower scales up.
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Or hacking it to mow a symbol of “I thought what I’d do was I’d become one of those deaf mutes”.
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Not sure on these larger industrial mowers, but the little WORX robot mower I have does have a programming port open for firmware updates. There’s been some custom firmwares out there; no need for signed code or anything like that.
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Seeing this picture, my first instinct was to tell op to stand in front of it. Worst that happens is an easy paycheck.
Run and grab a package of hotdogs and we can finally get the answer to an age old question.
Put a pile of sticks halfway between a mowed area and an area that hasn’t been cut.
Draw a line right in the middle of the camera lense? If that doesn’t do anything then a stick person?
Worst that happens is an easy paycheck.
I would say worse that happens is a lawn mowing robot runs over me and I end up in the ICU.
And then you have every right to sue the beejezus outta whoever unleashed a robot into public that has super fast spinning knives but no obstacle avoidance programming.
Cool. You get cut to ribbons by a lawn mower. I have enough health problems as it is.
Or just don’t vandalise government property which is there to make life better.
I mean to be fair these are more intrusive thought type things. I definitely probably would never actually do anything like that…
Wow I didn’t know they were commercially available. That is so cool!
You in the US?
Robot lawn mowers are very common in Europe. You’ll see these small electric mowers in people’s yards all over the place. Businesses also have them running all day out front. Never seen one in the US.
They are equipped with GPS, so they are locked to a specific area to prevent theft.
GPS are very fancy ones, unless that’s changed since I last looked into it. A buried wire, “invisible fence”, has been the norm for all consumer grade ones I’ve seen.
That’s the style we have as well. In addition to the wire it also detects if it bumps into walls.
The ones I have seen are GPS locked and they automatically “return home” to the charger when rain drops are detected.
I think the wire ones usually do too. When they’re out of power and possibly if it rains, they go straight until they reach the wire, and then follow it home to dock.
Yes, I believe the GPS ones are also guided by a wire to find edges and find their way home. The GPS is mostly for theft prevention. Won’t work outside a specific area unless it’s unlocked from the backend.
I saw this for the first time in Brussels! Our Airbnb host got a kick over how enthralled 3 American women were over the idea of a lawn roomba 😂.
I am in the U.S., yes.
Probably don’t use them here in the US because they’re afraid people will use them for target practice.
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