A brief history
While I’m personally fond of mowing my lawn – it’s a calm and relaxing chore for me – most people don’t tend to enjoy it. Back in 1995, Udi Peless and Shai Abramson noticed this and founded a company called Friendly Machines (later changed to Friendly Robotics – Robomow). Their idea was to create robots that move in and around the home, doing the mundane tasks that people do not like to do anymore.
While they have a range of robots for several tasks, their main focus is the Robomow.
It was first released in Israel in 1998 and was released in Europe and the UK in 1999. Since then, the company has continued to innovate and improve their product line, with some patented features that the competition doesn’t have…
20 years later
Friendly Robotics – Robomow is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and they hosted an event to demonstrate their old line of Robomow products, and showcase their most recent additions.
Mowing down the competition
As I mentioned in my intro: Robomow has some great patents and features that the competition doesn’t have, and that immediately explains why they have been succesful for twenty years and running:
- Mowing the sides: The most obvious, but also the most practical one. Since Robomows blades are not aligned with the wheels (as opposed to conventional robot mowers), it allows for much better mowing of the boundaries of your lawn.
- More power: Robomow mowers feature electrical engines which provide much more power than the competition. This allows your mower to cut even the longest grass, like for example in the beginning of Spring, when your grass might be longer than at other times. Other manufacturer’s robots often require you to mow the lawn by hand the first time each season. Also noteworthy: the engine senses how much resistance there is, and can down- or upscale its RPMs accordingly. Nice!
- Faster: Because of the powerful engines (don’t let that word fool you, they’re still quiet!), the large blades and the wide array of sensors on the robots which help in its automatic mowing, the mowers are many times faster than your conventional robot mower.
- Some other nice feats: if you maintain it properly, change the blades every season (they only cost about €30), it should last for about 8 years (even though there are still some of the early models who still work after 15+ years). It has a rain sensor, which detects when it’s really not appropriate to mow the lawn in order not to damage it (and yes, it’s rain proof!), obstacle sensing, fast setup, and much more.
There’s an app for that
Now for the last bit of good (tech) news: there’s even an app for that! Robomow launched an app for Android and iDevices which allows you to remote control your robot and some other goodies like changing the settings, seeing how long it has been mowing etcetera.
We noticed at the event that it can be real fun, so please try this at home 😉
Unfortunately I’m in the process remodelling my house, so no free budget for one of these babies, but I’m most certainly convinced and will get me one in the coming years.
Special thanks to Lewis PR and Robomow for the invitation!
