Toro iMow - A Robotic Mower that Works?

sg3000 asks: "Our lawnmower broke -- it's an electric, rechargeable Craftsman mulcher mower, and it seems the battery won't charge any longer. So, now we have to find a new lawnmower. My wife, being an environmentalist, listed her requirements: electric, zero emissions, and mulching. Luckily, she never said she didn't want robot to mow our lawn, so my solution so far is the Toro iMow. Unfortunately, the iMow isn't selling well; They only sold about 500 units last year and Friendly Robotics's US local company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year. They've already dropped the price 50% since it's introduction, so I don't want to pick one of these up and then have Toro discontinue the model. Has anyone had any experience with one of these things? Does it really work? Will my lawn look good afterwards? Will I spend 3 hours watching it to make sure it doesn't run over a neighbor's kid? Does it have little arms that sprout out to run the edger? Should I look for something else, resigned that my dreams of a little robot to mow my lawn are still years away?"

"Apparently, the way it works is you lay out some conductive wire along the perimeter of your lawn, and let the iMow loose. It first mows the perimeter, and then it zig-zags through the inside until it completes your lawn. It looks a little random in action-- kind of like a teenager half-heartedly mowing the lawn after he's been told 5 times to, 'Do it already!'

After a little searching on Google, I learned a little about the mower. Apparently Toro rebrands the Robomower made by Friendly Robotics. There are some mpegs of the mower in action on their site. The movies are pretty funny to watch -- check out the "Handling a Tree". Unfortunately, the robot doesn't seem to be very efficient and there are no good shots of what the lawn looks like afterwards. There should also be a movie showing what the neighbors think when they see this thing in action."

Comments

Coming to a courtroom near you:

[base3]

An Apple lawsuit against Toro for daring to prefix the name of anything with a lowercase i.

And coming to a weblog near you: another first post!