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Agreed. A better solution would be electric mower robots http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/ charged from solar (or other low/zero-carbon energy source). Or no grass at all.

and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers

I respectfully disagree.

Not solar powered but it does start automatically and return to its base station to charge automatically:

http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/

Now if people would just make bot software to do my dishes and mow my lawn...

You mean, like, some sort of...dish washing machine? And maybe some sort of automatic, robotic lawn-mower?

I mean, seriously, did you even try googling these things? :P

-G

Does anybody have any experience with these lawn-mower robots?

http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/
     

Well there is a tipping point at some point.

There will come a time when you go to a store as a drive thru,
and you wave a Fob key at a scanner with your shopping list
and a robot will start handing you bags to put in your back seat.

Then you drive off from the almost 100% robotic store,
or it will be delivered by said robotic truck to your house.

Your car will be built by robots.

Your house will be built by robots.

Your food will be grown and harvested by robots.

FBI at langley already have 'Electric sheep'

http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/about/news/

Once 90% of jobs are done by robots, then it will be well past
the tipping point.

A lot of ppl say there will be new jobs, but at some point any
job you can think of can be done by a very well programmed robot.

Its kinda like the ppl that think that the illegals that mow
your yard are too dumb to do any other job, then they show
up in construction and other jobs and ppl say hey wait !

The illegals can do any job here that they do in their home country,
and the robots will be doing the jobs at some point as well.

Asimo can already serve drinks, soon he will do other human
tasks with no problem.

http://asimo.honda.com/asimotv/

Then it just becomes about getting the price down.

When the robot can build and repair other robots then they
will not even need the factory workers.

The Toro iMow is a rebranded unit from Friendly Robotics. By the way, these are by no means a new thing. A friend of mine boguht one about 5 years ago and loved it. It looks like they have gotten signficantly more expensive since then, though.

http://friendlyrobotics.com/

http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/

The Future Is Now.

These are cheaper than children.

Ok, so who do you think works in the factories building all of this dooms-day equipment that will ruin our livlihoods?

Either illegal aliens or H-1b/L-1/TN visa holders (depending on the country they're from and how they were hired, and what job they are doing). That is if any human beings need to work there at all- I already see checkout counters at my local grocery store that don't need any employees to do the work.

The jobs are displaced, not eliminated in the grand scheme of things.

When you only need one illegal alien to do the work of 8 previous checkout clerks, the jobs have been eliminated. They won't be coming back.

Employment rates and economies fluctuate, and the only thing that never changes is change.

I used to think that way- until I started asking WHY. The answer was not very pretty- and points to a time when we're all just slaves to about 2000 families who are already well on their way to owning the entire planet.

The Great Depression wasn't caused by technology, it was caused by shitty banking practicies and an amalgamation of bad economic factors.

So? Different depressions are caused by different things. The next BIG one will be caused by selling the government to the highest bidder.

Technology can reduce the number of jobs within a certain sector, but that labor is merely displaced. It drives up the value of skilled laborers.

Skilled labor can be imported, thus driving the value back down. And eventually, all skilled labor can be replaced with expert systems and machines.

Menial labor will always be in demand.

Remember my example of the checkout clerk? Menial labor is already being replaced. I no longer need illegal immigrants to mow my lawn, my Robomow has replaced Juan, and I don't need them inside my house either, my Roomba does the same job inside. What makes you think Menial Labor will always be in demand? Always is a long time, and in the next 40 years, I can already forsee most menial labor being replaced.

I realize that you're passionate, but this argument is a little bit of a red herring.

Now that's a good joke, given my name, and an even better one given what I stand for- I'm not anti-tech. I'm in fact looking forward to the day when we can collectively, as a race, tell the entire capitalist system that we don't need it anymore.

Technology can reduce the number of jobs within a certain sector, but that labor is merely displaced. It drives up the value of skilled laborers. Menial labor will always be in demand. It's just that it's easier to notice 'OMG my fries are served by a robot!!11' than to really step back and take a look at where Mr. Fryman went. I can assure you that there are other jobs he is capable of.

The other jobs have already been taken by the illegal aliens. And he's too much of an idiot to become skilled. I'll tell you what happens to him- he spends a couple of years looking for a job, and then the Department of Labor reclassifies him as disabled and gives him $70 a month to live on. It's happened to MILLIONS of people in the last 5 years- it's the only way they were able to keep the unemployment rate so low while importing more illegal aliens each month than they had jobs for.

Hear me out on this. The new boom will be automation.

Cars that drive themselves, house hold robots, robotic lawnmowers, expert systems, and better search engines etc etc.

Put your stocks into these areas... Its the next big hype because VCs will see these things and be mystified and start hurling wads of cash at the next roomba.

Yet another more serious solution is Friendly Robotics product. I have a robomower by them which works great. Though the price tag on the vac is steep (but not far from the Tribobite).

Mowing? Why didn't you say so:

http://www.friendlyrobotics.com/NewSite/robomow.ht m

A friend actually has one. Part of his loyal robot army.

If you haven't already, you must experience the W00t! Basically it's one deal a day, good until sold out. I bought my robomower there, and almost bought a 3ghz HP PC (yuk! HP) this past weekend. Keep any eye on the product photos, they often inject some humorous twist...

From the site:
What is woot and who's behind it?
woot.com is an online store and community run by the employees of a 10 year old consumer electronics distributor that focuses on close-outs and generally buying stuff cheap. Since the distributor doesn't sell to end users, Woot, Inc provides us with an employee-store slash market-testing type of place. Hopefully the boss won't take notice. We anticipate profitability by 2043 -- by then we should be retired; someone smarter might take over and jack up the prices.

I see only 1 item, do you sell anything else?
No. We sell 1 item per day until it is sold out or until 11:59pm central time when it is replaced (see next entry for details). However, each item we sell is in stock and typically ships within 2-3 business days.

What is the schedule for new items?
OK - this is simpler than it sounds: A new product is released at 12am central time Monday through Friday mornings (if you are not a morning person, this can be described as Sunday - Thursday at midnight. better?) Friday's product will last through the weekend unless we sell out. If a product sells out during it's run, a new item will not appear until the next release time. You will know if a product is sold out, because the main page says "SOLD OUT" instead of "I want one". (clever, eh?)

Umm, ever heard of Robomow? Granted, you still need to push the big green "Go" button to get it started, but it's still better than doing it yourself.

There's everything from robotic lawnmowers to the upcoming Scooba mopbot.

There are a number of sites I check daily, some are 'deal sites' such as SlickDeals..., but one of the more interesting has to be w00t !

They have a new deal every day (except weekends), once they run out, that's it ! Don't miss their famous "Bag 'o Crap" specials, and always read the details and the photo (they have some of the most entertaining descriptions evar), and keep and eye out for bravewoman.

I actually bought and actively use the RoboMower RL850 I saw there one day (love it, by the way).

Check out RoboMower from Friendly Robotics. It doesn't have lasers, but your hands and legs are safe, because you don't need to be near it while it works.

No, but this can.

Umm, as mentioned earlier the tech is here. See this link to the RoboMower

I live in America and I have a Robomower. Of course, my kids arne't unsupervised and my dog is smart enough to get out of the way. BTW, my lawn looks great ;).

1. It sucked at sucking. It would roll over the same piece of fuzz on the carpet several times and still not pick it up. It just plain didn't work too well. At best it could be a supplement to a regular vacuum, but I didn't think it was worth it.

2. It wasn't much quieter then a regular vacuum. You couldn't really do much while it was working, such as watch TV in the next room. You couldn't ignore it, it was just too loud. This might be okay for people who leave the house often and run it then, but if you're home and just don't like to vacuum this isn't gaining you much.

3. The heuristics didn't work to well. Maybe they worked great in the lab with a perfectly square room, but when it needs to work in the real world and go around furniture it seems to fail miserably. It would go over the same patch of floor 5 or 6 times, yet never go over the patch 5 feet away within the time allowed.

4. It couldn't transition from tile to carpet as advertised. It tried to go over at an angle, got stuck with one wheel on, one off, and proceeded to start rubbing a black rubber mark in my carpet (yes, the carpet/tile transition height was within advertised limits).

I certainly wish iRobot the best of luck with the Roomba, since success with this early model will lead to continuously improved products. I am certainly not against robotic appliances, I also have a Robomower and love it. It has many advantages over a manual mower and no drawbacks (except a bit higher price tag, but the benefits far outweigh this IMHO). It's very quit (I can run it at night), nearly maintenance free (it mulches while it cuts, no bag to empty, no engine to maintain), and completely replaces a standard mower. I long for the day when we have more products like this, but I just didn't think the first gen Roomba was it.

done

As great is this might be to farmers in australia, my question is how long will it take to automate my lawn care?

There is already something like this. It doesn't use gps (it uses wires similar to pet invisible fences) and an algorithm that produces a "random" path. But it effectively does what you want, to mow the lawn for you so you don't have to.

RoboMower

There are robots that cut the lawn. Though they aren't solar powered.

Here's a review by someone whose be using it over a year.

Of course it is still cheaper to just hire the kid down the street, and edges and sweeps too.

Why bother with a remote controlled mower? friendlyrobotics.com

Or you could just buy a goat.