but you do need to be aware of how people are leveraging technology as things evolve.
BENEFITS OF ROBOTIC MOWERS Some of the main benefits of implementing robotic mowers include offsetting labor, increasing efficiency and improving customer satisfaction. “It enables us to redistribute our existing full-service crews to visit more properties,” Herold says. “That’s an over- played talking point of autonomy, but that’s the goal.” Mosley says they’ve been able to train their employees to be horticulturalists and focus on pruning details. “I’d not say we’re shortening visits, but the quality of what we’re able to offer is substantial because we’re not spending the majority of the time on site mowing,” Mosely says. “We can just come on site and go straight to detail work.” Plants Creative has also been able to scale their crew sizes down. Previously, the majority of the their crews were three-man crews, but now they only have one three-man crew and all the others are two-man crews. Even at the museum, Chetwynd says not only are they saving money by not having people out mowing, but those staff members can now work on more mission-oriented functions. Herold adds that using robots in the field allows them to upskill labor and give them new avenues for growth. “You’re getting to work with technol-
ogy,” Herold says. “You’re not doing as much monotonous work. We’re giving you the best-in-class tools to work with, which is really exciting to people. It gives us access to completely different labor pools previously inaccessible to the industry.” Williams says they’ve noticed substan-
tial improvements in the overall time required to maintain a property. “When utilized effectively, each mow-
er has the potential to save 40 hours of labor,” Williams says. “Extrapolating this across two mowers within the crew, we could witness savings of up to 320 hours each week.” By keeping the lawn cut constantly,
Mosley and Blinten report improved turf health. “There’s a hidden benefit of not hav-
ing to put as many chemicals on a lawn because the nitrogen nutrients in the ex- tremely short grass clippings filter right back into the soil and feed it organically,” Blinten says. Mosley and Blinten also say their cus-
tomers respond positively to automated mowing. “We have seen an awful lot of visitors show significant interest in the technology,” Chetwynd says. “I am glad that the safety features of the mower allow it to deal regularly with interference from kids who think R2-D2 is mowing the grass. We joke that in a museum filled with airplanes, our most popular exhibit is our iMows.”
CHALLENGES OF ROBOTIC MOWERS The main challenge preventing robotic mowers from becoming more widespread is site limitations. Mosley evaluates customer properties to see if they are a good fit and only offers the Automower option to those clients. “The first thing I’m looking for is one: Is
there power access to be able to power up a charging station in a good location where the mower is going to be able to access the turf area?” Mosley says. Mosley says wide-open spaces that
are level tend to be the ideal landscape for robotic mowers. Williams says larger, wide-open
properties maximize their efficiency while smaller or broken-up areas of turf decrease efficiency. Herold says the property determines
the ROI of deploying robotic equipment. In some cases, they are simply not worth the trouble of deploying. He says it’s
more about workflow optimization. They leave the decision of how many robots to deploy up to the individual crews. “The people that we’re employing,
they’re smart operators,” Herold says. “They know how to get their job done on time. We don’t need to solve that for them. That also leads to we don’t need to be doing a lot of this upfront work for our teams. We need to create a product that’s really easy for them to use, and it’s very intuitive.” Keeping the fleet of robotic mowers up and running can also be an issue. Mosley says it’s a team effort ensuring there isn’t a lot of downtime with their robotic mowers. “Just getting to them when things do
Photos: (Far left) Plants Creative Landscapes (Above) Stihl (Below) Mariani Landscape
“While robotic mowers excel at mowing grass and are likely to take on additional tasks in the future, manual oversight will remain essential. Tasks such as detailing flower beds, hand pruning, and engaging with customers will always require human intervention.” - Corey Williams, Color Burst Landscapes
National Association of Landscape Professionals 31
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