It’s boom time for autonomous mowing, with the market growing exponentially and new technology helping to drive the shift from manual labour to “set and forget” garden maintenance. We talked to a Miimo expert at Honda UK about the rise of autonomous mowing and how robots are transforming the gardening experience.
What’s behind the growth in autonomous mowing?
There’s been a shift in the way people think about mowing their lawn. Some still take great pleasure from it, but growing numbers of keen gardeners see it as a task they need to get out of the way before they can get on with the creative side of horticulture. They want to attend to their flowers, shrubs, and borders, and they’re glad to see the back of a “donkey work” sort of job that can be done by a robotic mower.
Have there been any leaps forward in the technology that help explain this growth?
There have been autonomous mowers on the market for many years, and Honda launched its first robot mower back in 2012, so they’ve got 14 years of experience behind them. In that period, one of the big changes has been the introduction of mobile connectivity, which enables the mowers to be controlled by an app. To begin with, the apps worked via Bluetooth, so you had to be within three metres of the machine; but now they have 4G SIM cards in them, so you can effectively operate them from anywhere in the world. One of the big benefits of this is that it means the Miimo can connect to smart weather apps and automatically reduce the amount of time it goes out when the weather is bad.
Does using a robot mower really improve the quality of your lawn?
The idea with the robotic lawnmower is that it cuts little and often. Most people might cut their grass once a week with a manual lawnmower, whereas a robotic lawnmower can go out every day, as it’s only taking the very, very top off the grass where there is a high concentration of nutrients. Because it’s cutting such a small amount of grass, it doesn’t collect the clippings. Instead, it puts them back into the soil as mulch and nitrogen-rich fertiliser, which really improves the lawn health by helping to reduce moss and improve the greenness of the grass.
Can they cope with complicated garden layouts?
A lot of people, particularly those with large gardens, will find that their lawns aren’t completely flat, but that’s not a problem. The Miimo can cope on slopes up to 25 degrees, which puts it towards the top end of the industry when it comes to managing gradients in gardens. You can also set up “no-go zones” where you can wire things out – we call it lollipopping. If you’ve got a rockery or a particularly steep hill where you think the mower won’t cope, you can prevent it from going into that area.
What are the benefits of making the switch to autonomous mowing?
The benefits are twofold. First, there’s the green dividend, which comes in the form of the carbon emissions saved by switching from a petrol-powered walk-behind lawnmower. If you want to know how much running a Miimo is likely to cost, you can visit the Honda website, put in your postcode, and it will work out which machine is most appropriate for you and roughly how much electricity it will take to run it each year. But the real benefit is the time saved. You’re freeing up a good chunk of your Saturday morning to tend to your borders or spend time with family – and you can’t put a value on that.
