Autonomous 36 or 48 inch mower for rows and areas - would something like this be of interest for people?

[candersen10]

Looking for some feedback here on an idea. Wondering if anyone has thoughts?

On my family farm, we have 200 acres, and about $400K on mowers/mowing machines. In short, I’m SICK of sitting on a mower. In paralell, I spent about 4 years working for Case New Holland, then left in 2017 to start a robotics company (burro.ai).

Today, we have over 350 of our Burro robots running in paid commerical use, often as harvest assist aids carrying berries and grapes alongside people, as towing vehicles replacing small tractors and operators towing trailers in nurseries, and as autonomous patrol vehicles, docking to charge, then driving around sending alerts when people/thieves are seen.

Customers of mine keep putting weird mowers behind our Burros to try to autonomously mow, then my team keeps thinking there is a use and trying things out.

Would anyone in their right mind want a mower that autonomously docked to charge, then repalced a BX or 1025R sized machine and mowed areas / rows autonomously on a continous cycle?

To me, it sounds amazing - the idea would be something that you can set up to row areas and rows with a set schedule, and then set it / forget it without having to mow yourself. In my view, this would buy my family farm about 50 hours a week of labor during the summer / or about $2k/week just in labor. What do people think?

Would LOVE any feedback positive or negative!

Some pics below also for context:

[speedengineer]

I think it’s a cool idea. I have to imagine the big companies are working on this already? Unsure though, I’m not in that industry.

For people with backyards orchards and small areas to mow…some might be interested in an autonomous mower for the cool factor, even if it doesn’t make financial sense.

For those with farms or a lot of land to mow, I think it will really come down to the financials and cost/benefit of the system compared to operating a mower. How much do they value their time (or how how much does it cost to hire someone to do it).

Since I am intrigued by the idea, I put together a very rough back-of-napkin cost analysis for mowing 8 acres once every 2 weeks. Yikes, mowing isn’t cheap if you count your time. I excluded maintenance costs. Basically, if I were to value the labor at $25/hour, then an autonomous mower capable of mowing 4-8 acres per week could cost up to $20k and be equivalent to a traditional option. This assumes it will have an 8 year lifespan, maintenance costs don’t exceed that for a gas mower, and that it truly is time free (doesn’t get stuck, lost, broke down in field, require attention, etc).

Rough back-of-napkin cost analysis: A majority of the cost is labor time.

One advantage of autonomous is that a smaller mower can take care of a large property, since it can run many hours every day. But, one downside is, the noise could be annoying, especially if you live there. Neighbors might complain if a mower is running several hours a day, every day. Also, more hours/day would impact years of service before the mower is worn out.

On a side note, sounds like a liability nightmare for your company, with customers attaching mowers to your machines, if they aren’t designed for that purpose with safety shutoffs, etc!