While many people love doing it manually as an exercise or merely for the pleasure of moving around their yard, thousands consider mowing as a chore better-taken care of by automatic lawnmowers. These mowers are faster and smarter.
Who would not want to enjoy the treat of warm sunshine, fragrant flowers, buzzing bees, or chirping birds with the mower softly whining away in the background! Also as these robotic lawn mowers are totally automatic, they are a God’s gift to the elderly or less mobile gardeners!
While going for one you should best focus on its automatic sensors, quietness and adjustability of the blades. And they should preferably do everything on their own.
What is a robotic lawn mower?
A robotic lawn mower is a robot that cuts lawn grass by itself. The user has to set up a border wire around the lawn which specifies the area that needs to be mowed. The robot gets to know the boundary of the area which it needs to trim with the help of the wire and it also helps locate their charging dock.
What features make the robotic lawn mowers attractive?
Sophisticated robotic lawn mowers come with self-docking and some also contain rain sensors and most hardly require human interaction. As you would expect more robotic mowers nowadays integrate well with smart phones and come with custom apps in which you can adjust settings, schedule mowing frequencies and times, and even control the mower with a digital joystick.
Modern robotic lawn mowers are equipped with specialized sensors allowing them to automatically mow negotiating obstacles or retire to sleep at times of rainfall. Entirely solar-powered robotic lawn mowers are also available.
Obviously the best feature of all is the fact that you can sit back and let the robot do the job.
How do Robotic lawn mowers work and how are these better?
Many robotic lawn mowers use a random mowing system where the machine moves around the lawn till it comes to a loop boundary wire which is hidden around the edges of the lawn and then changes the head and keeps moving till it hits the wire again. This system is quite time-consuming if your lawn is big enough and requires continuous mower operations.
But some of these robotic lawn mowers store a map of the garden it is to mow and is then able to tackle the task more efficiently and systematically. This attribute is known as the intelligent navigational system called LogiCut. This reduces the time taken as it avoids cutting the same area more than once. Also, power consumption is reduced.
Features like LogiCut, local weather, and forecasts, the map combined along with algorithms that predict the grass growth make the robot mowers more effective. The sensors find out the obstructions (fallen fruit) or holes and help the mower to move around them or turn around. Most models are even capable of handling slopes, although the angles vary.
The mowers locate their charging stations with the aid of radiofrequency emissions, with the help of a boundary wire or following an optional guidewire. This will do away with wear patterns that may be caused by the mower in the lawn.
The robotic lawnmowers come with a rechargeable battery and you can set schedules for mowing frequency, times, and days of the week. These are usually quiet with sound levels of around 58-75 decibels. The mowers are fully automatic and don’t need any supervision. A single charge usually lasts 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours.
The different models each have their recommended lawn size. While the smaler ones are recommended for lawns measuring up to a 1/4 acre the bigger ones have a recommended lawn size of 1/2 acre. Now these are recommendations from the producers of the mowers, at times they also mention maximum lawn sizes for their machines, we have seen this go as high as 1.24 acre.
The robotic mowers are usually weather-proof, and although the could work even during heavy rainfall we all know that mowing the lawn during rainfall is not doing your lawn justice. Most mowers are equiped with a rain sensor and will return to their base station when detecting rain.
Being mostly compact mowers allows for easy storage. Also being emission-free they are perfect for garden maintenance.
How are robotic lawn mowers powered?
Robotic lawn mowers usually use rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. The charge time and run time vary with the kind of model. Most models automatically return to their charging stations when the battery gets low. The charging stations need to be connected to the electrical outlet in your garden.
What do they normally do with all the grass?
Most models have cutting blades that shave off very minute grass pieces that do not require the collection and are better left behind to act as mulch. They feed the lawn naturally allowing you to use less fertilizer.
Now you have up to date knowledge about robotic lawn mowers, it is time to choose the ideal one that will serve your purpose. Here we bring you five of the most acclaimed robotic lawn mowers with excellent star rating.
| Picture | Product |
Recommended lawn size |
Cutting hight | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
  |
up to 1/4 acre |
0.8 to 3.5 inch |
||
  |
up to 1/4 acre |
2 to 3.5 inch |
||
  |
up to 0.4 acre |
2 to 3.6 inch |
||
  |
up to 1/2 acre |
0.8 to 3.5 inch |
||
  |
up to 1/2 acre |
1.6 to 3.9 inch |
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