Roomba-maker iRobot to come out with wireless robotic lawn mower

spaminator

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Roomba-maker iRobot to come out with wireless robotic lawn mower
Alina Selyukh, REUTERS
First posted: Thursday, August 13, 2015 08:46 AM EDT | Updated: Thursday, August 13, 2015 10:25 AM EDT
WASHINGTON - The future of free-wheeling automated yard work took a step closer to American consumers on Wednesday after U.S. regulators gave robot maker iRobot Corporation: We Are The Robot Company technical clearance to make and sell a robotic lawn mower.
The Bedford, Mass.-based company, known for its robot vacuum cleaner Roomba, has designed a robot lawn mower that would wirelessly connect with stakes in the ground operating as signal beacons, rising above the ground by as much as 24 inches (61 cm).
Automated grass-mowers have spread across Europe in recent years. In the United States, iRobot told the FCC its competitors only offer hands-free mowers that require underground fences or other elaborate setups.
IRobot's stake design, however, required a waiver from the Federal Communications Commission to make sure that transmissions between its machines and the antennas wouldn't interfere with other devices using the same frequencies.
The FCC usually prohibits the operation of "fixed outdoor infrastructure" transmitting low-power radio signal without a license, and iRobot's lawn mower beacons fell in that category.
The National Radio Astronomy Observatory had fought iRobot's waiver request, saying the lawn mowers would interfere with its telescopes. But the regulators waived the rules for iRobot, saying its beacon design should be safe with the promised limitations on height, signal strength and use in residential areas.
"The FCC's assessment agrees with our analysis that the technology will not have a negative impact on radio astronomy," iRobot's spokesman said in a statement welcoming the FCC's move.
"The FCC's decision will allow iRobot to continue exploring the viability of wideband, alongside other technologies, as part of a long-term product exploration effort in the lawn-mowing category."
iRobot's Roomba 880. (Supplied)

Roomba-maker iRobot to come out with wireless robotic lawn mower | Gadgets | Tec
 

AnnaG

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My sister has a cat that likes riding her roomba. It also likes riding the mop, too. lol
Hubby stuck a peg in the middle of the lawn one time, then tied a rope to the peg and the other end to the lawnmower and proceeded to watch the lawnmower wind its way towards the middle of the lawn. then he made a box kind of thing and put it over the peg and reattached the rope so the mower would cut more at a time. It was just an experiment, though. He did not mind mowing the lawn. That was in the Okanagan.
I do the mowing now because I have more shrubs and stuff and don't want him on my rider going full bore around my shrubs and especially not over them.

What gives me the heebie jeebies is these cars that park themselves. I may have mentioned this before. I can picture one blowing a resistor or a diode or something and going full-throttle across a sidewalk and into a restaurant or something. I will pass on autonomic cars.