Two workhouses employed by the city of Richmond, B.C., don’t take coffee breaks and never complain about the heat. They are the robotic lawn mowers that have been trimming the grass outside city hall since 2022, as a pilot project. Though often described as autonomous, the electric mowers actually are not – instead relying on perimeter wires to keep them within a defined area. They move in unpredictable patterns and run almost silently. “There’s no way to predict where it’s going to go,” said Egan Davies, the city’s manager of parks operations, watching one of the robots glide at random across the grass. The other mower was on a break, recharging quietly nearby. “It’s different than conventional grass cutting equipment. These don’t actually cut the grass,” Davies explained. “It doesn’t allow the grass to grow. It comes out every day and it just grazes the surface, and so at most, it’s cutting off a couple of millimeters.” This, he argued, makes the robots more efficient, and less water is needed to keep the grass green. So far, nobody has tried to steal the devices, although they are equipped with a loud alarm that’s triggered when picked up. They also don’t work beyond city property, so “would be useless,” Davies said. Similar units cost between a few hundred dollars to a several thousand. Although still in the trial phase, the city says expansion to other sites is possible, if it continues to like what it’s seeing.
