Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Since you control the machine and your yard, you can use cameras mounted to your house for tracking. You don't want smart, you want dumb and predictable. But good luck making something with a rapidly spinning blade safe while unsupervised.

It's probably cheaper to hire a landscape maintenance company, or a neighborhood teenager.




good luck making something with a rapidly spinning blade safe while unsupervised

Then don't! If it's autonomous it can be out there all the time rather than once a week/whatever, no spinning blade needed. Plan B? Buy a goat.


> Buy a goat

Nah. What we really want and need is a robot that while it mows the lawn, turns it into: its entire energy source, its entire pool of building blocks for daily (nightly?) self-repairs, for reproduction, for producing oh maybe fluffy warm wool and delicious milk/cheese/butter as a side product, and fertilizes the land from the occasional .. discharge resulting from perpetual energy production-consumption and internal cleanups/repairs, finally as it still does wear down as all physical assemblages are wont to with time, it leaves behind highly durable inputs for sturdy clothing and stylish home decoration (horns, hides, leather etc)!

All from a friggin lawn.

Roboruminant 2.0 baby. Need to reinvent mammalian evolution before we can really reinvent the wheel!


Plan C, turn the yard into a garden.


If only goats would refrain from eating everything in a yard. Like flower gardens? Plant a tree sapling? Bushes?


Which is awesome because there is no long lawn on Friday nights. It can be continually mowed.


> You don't want smart, you want dumb and predictable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMOASdSu9YU


I'd be worried about the rope breaking! Sitting there watching it mow is better than actually mowing myself, but I mostly want the time back. My yard is way too big for my self-propelled electric lawn mower. I don't want to spend 1.5 hours every Saturday anymore.


Get an electric one and use the cord instead of the rope.


Lawn mowers are already safe enough to operate in nothing but your underwear while drinking a beer. I know this because I've seen people do it.

I'd call that safe enough to operate unsupervised in an enclosed yard.


> Lawn mowers are already safe enough to operate in nothing but your underwear

And if in doubt, just wear under-armour instead..




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: