Just a dream of home-owners in the 1940's, now you can buy this powerful, high-end robotic lawnmower:
(Husqvqrnq Automaker 450x video)
Now, pushing a lawn mower is a sweaty chore, making lawn care the perfect assignment for an automaton. Husqvarna‘s new high-end robotic lawn caretaker, the Husqvarna Automower 450x, costs $3,500. The company makes cheaper models around $2,000, and the competing Robomow costs $2,099. Most of these smart mowers can be controlled by an app, but the biggest Husqvarna can cover the most ground—up to 1.25 acres. I was eager to put it to work on my glorious greenery.
The first step involves corralling the ‘bot. Like the Roomba, which uses cone-shaped plastic beacons to indicate where to work (and where not to) in your home, you tell the Husky where to mow by staking a perimeter with green wire...
In his 1944 novella City, Clifford Simak describes the joys of the robotic lawn mower:
Gramp Stevens sat in a lawn chair, watching the mower at work, feeling the warm, soft sunshine seep into his bones. The mower reached the edge of the lawn, clucked to itself like a contented hen, made a neat turn and trundled down another swath. The bag holding the clippings bulged.
(Read more about the robot lawn mower)
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?'' - Isaac Asimov (1940)
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Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering From Harvard
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'