As a man who owns two dogs and therefore has a lawn that resembles a dirt track rally more than a place in which I can host a barbecue, I need all the help with it I can get. I am disappointed to admit that I have long since passed lawn mowing duties over to my girlfriend, given that every time I look at it I remember the lush grass that once coated it, and a lone tear trickles down my cheek. Fortunately, iRobot are looking at manufacturing a robotic lawn mower that will soon ensure that neither me nor my significant other need worry ourselves about the mess that lies behind our home.
iRobot are the manufacturers of the Roomba line of robotic vacuum cleaners, that have been saving both time and effort for the lazier among us for years now. The FCC have granted iRobot the approval they need to begin looking at developing a Roomba designed specifically for mowing grass, after an appeal from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory which claimed that the design would interfere with its telescopes has been waived.
Unfortunately, the robotic lawn mower doesn’t have anything close to a tentative launch date, as according to Reuters the FCC’s decision “will allow iRobot to continue exploring the viability of wideband, alongside other technologies, as part of a long-term product exploration effort in the lawn mowing category,” though this suggests that iRobot are still in the conceptualization stages of the fledgling technology.
There are other options for those who wish to let a robot do the handy work for them, with Flymo’s robotic lawn mower being a more than adequate tool for the job, albeit an incredibly pricey one. We’d anticipate that iRobot’s design would fall into the more affordable category, but this could just be another highly expensive gadget that will only be owned by those who really don’t want to do any gardening.
Hopefully that isn’t the case, though, and iRobot eventually release a mowing Roomba that will finally allow me to look at my lawn without feeling a bit depressed.
