Robotic Lawn Mower Gets Regulatory Approval

Dave Knott writes with news that US regulators have given iRobot clearance to make and sell an unmanned lawn mower. The company, known for its robot vacuum cleaner Roomba, has designed a robot lawn mower that would wirelessly connect with stakes in the ground operating as signal beacons, rising above the ground by as much as 61 centimetres. The Federal Communications Commission usually prohibits the operation of "fixed outdoor infrastructure" transmitting low-power radio signal without a licence. iRobot's lawn mower beacons fall in that category, and the stake design required a waiver from the FCC, which was opposed by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, stating that the lawn mowers would interfere with its telescopes. An anonymous reader writes with another piece of automated plant-related hardware at a slightly different scale: The tractor pulling the grain cart in the video has no one in the cab. It is controlled by an open source autopilot, and it can operate autonomously all day in the field without a driver. I can't take credit for every bit of hardware and software used but I did put it all together.

Comments

Whats the story?

[OzPeter]

You have been able to buy robotic lawnmowers for a while now. There are competing brands on Amazon. I'm guessing that it is just iRobot getting approval that is the actual story. Not robotic mowers in general.

Now get off my lawn (my robot wants to mow it)

License?

[Karmashock]

I'm a little baffled as to why any of that is needed?

I'd just use a wifi network for it. Why do anything else? Here someone will say "what if you wanted to do a long range whatever"... I don't think the "beacons" work that way. I think they're just used to help the mower home in on a charge station. Mix that with an infared light on the front and the mower would have a second thing to home in on. The wifi wouldn't even have to do anything. It could just make a bogus SSID broadcast every second or so.... done.

There are a lot of automated mowers on the market already. I'm a little confused as to why iRobot bothered with the FCC on this matter. What do they get out of this besides having to deal with lethargic retrograde federal institutions with no vested interest in competence, customer service, or even rationality? Clearly the winning move is to find whatever loophole you can use so you just avoid their mandate.