We thought the rider fell off or something and it was going to crash. Then it turned and kept mowing. Park Roomba!
Another picture:
Automation isn’t the enemy.
As ever, the owner class that hoards and wages economic war on you though automation for their exclusive benefit at their society’s expense are your enemy, whether you would fight them or not.
Arguing that we should “save” back breaking, repetitive unnatural movement, manual labor jobs that break human bodies by the time they’re 40 is the WRONG hill to die on. Fight for the citizenry to reap the benefits of automation through taxation, not to keep shitty jobs robots can do faster and better. Fight to change the economy so that everyone doesn’t need meaningless jobs machines can do better so we can have actual time to live our lives.
Taxing the fuck out of automation would let everyone win, because a heavily taxed robot is still far cheaper for the company than a human or possibly several humans for that one robot would be, so automation is here either way. We can riot to change our economy to benefit from this technology as we should, or we can be steamrolled yet again by the dictates of the affluent who will demand and get all the benefits and none of the responsibility if not confronted and countered on revolutionary terms.
Please pick the former. There’s no dignity or meaning to be had shuffling boxes around in an Amazon warehouse. Begging the owners to let us try to continue to compete with literal purpose built repetitive labor machines is not the way.
Fun fact: The Luddites weren’t opposed to technology. In many cases, they built the machines they would later destroy.
What they opposed was the ownership structure. The fact that they could be 30x more productive, yet be paid less than before because the required skill level was lower, and the working conditions were now dangerous and demeaning.
Yet when someone says “luddite” now, what do you think? A dummy who’s afraid of having cool stuff?
Good points, but I have one thing to add. You shouldn’t tax automation. You should increase corporate taxes for all companies. If you funded a UBI with that, it would solve lots of unemployment related problems: crime, poverty, etc. But it’s hard, simple but hard.
Put the corporate tax rate back up to 40% or more and implement a 10% robot tax on top of that. Then after that, implement a UBI starting at $1000 a month for US citizens with no strings attached, increasing with inflation over time. Solved for the next decade.
The top marginal tax rate should be 100%. The bottom marginal tax rate should be negative.
It’s too bad that the first things to be automated are the tasks that people don’t mind doing, leaving the real shitty tasks to be done by people. Riding around on a lawnmower has to be one of the most enjoyable forms of manual labour. Now the robots get the good jobs and we’re left with the backbreaking monotonous bullshit.
Now do AI!
Are these the immigrants that are stealing all our jobs?
This is what people should be fearing. Studies have shown that when immigrants come in and “take jobs”, they pay taxes, and buy goods to create a life here, effectively replacing the job they took (since we need people who make beds for them to sleep in, food for them to eat, etc).
This is automation that’s ACTUALLY taking our jobs. This automation doesn’t pay taxes, and doesn’t replace the job it takes.
Very true, but let’s also keep in mind that automation doesn’t have to be a social evil. If our economic and political systems were better oriented toward lifting up society’s disadvantaged and keeping extreme individual/family wealth in check, automation could benefit all. With better social safety nets (or a UBI), government-sponsored job training (perhaps paid for by taxes on automation), and incentives for starting small businesses, automation could mean less human drudgery in the workforce, and more efficient economic outcomes for all.
I’m not optimistic about that given our track record as a species, but it’s possible.
TL;DR: automated production is good if and only if the people own the means.
If we can fight the owners to keep our shitty back breaking jobs and win, we should have fought the owners to rebuild our economy for automation profits to largely benefit the people from the bottom up.
If we the peasant masses even can win against the tiny owner class oligarchs, lets fight for the right thing. And if we can’t win, well then it’s all masturbation anyway and they’ll do what they want.
It’s irrational to fight for “we demand to continue to break our backs making your shit instead of robots so we can continue to subsist on menial laborer wages with broken backs!” in any event. That’s some coal miner excuse for logic.
Unfortunately the system has laid the framework for it to destroy itself when automation becomes ubiquitous. Imagine if y2k was inevitable but the engineers who’s jobs it was to fix it hands were tied by the software company’s forcing them to install more and more bugged software.
I wish you were wrong, but unfortunately I think I agree with you.
I don’t fear this. Automate EVERYTHING NOW
Speak for yourself. I still want to jerk off manually.
Switches jerk off machine from auto to manual.
100% let’s do this.
You sure the automation doesn’t pay taxes…?
I have heard an idea floated around that the companies that make these types of automation devices would pay massive taxes on them, and that tax would pay for UBI. I’m not sure how the math works, but to me that sounds like the ultimate endgame. Then we can all enjoy our lives without needing to do tedious or backbreaking work.
Absolutely it’s the best way forward. The catch is that it’s hard to calculate. If I write an app that saves someone 3 minutes of each work day, how much am I taxed on what I automated? We can just tax the rich, and assume they automate away everyone’s jobs.
They took our jerbs!
My curiosity got the best of me, here’s the link to Wright: https://www.wrightmfg.com/products/mowers/commercial/stand-on/robotic-zk/
The Mower
- 40HP Vanguard Engine
- Hydro-Gear Smartec Drive-By-Wire 12cc
- 15.5 Gallon Fuel Capacity
- Centimeter-level accurate RTK GPS
- Commercial-grade Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)
- Depth-sensing object detection cameras
- Rock-solid wireless emergency stop
- Remote control mode
- Live Greenzie support: Call for support while in the field for real-time fixes.
The Software
- Mow the boundary once, and the mower fills in the rest
- Remembers maps and can repeat them when you come back. Just place it in the previous boundary.
- Create no-go zones that will be saved with your map to avoid hitting hard-to-see obstacles like drain covers or small pipes sticking out of the ground.
- Record and repeat: Record yourself mowing the entire property, and the mower will replicate your movement.
- Manage the mower with the controller or a smart device in real-time.
- Advanced fleet support: See how your fleet is performing. Replay entire jobs, not just a dot on the map.
- Run multiple units at once.
- Set the stripe angle (for those stunning cross-hatch patterns)
- Seamless automatic updates
Damn, $45k. Though I guess for something like a park it probably has a pretty quick ROI.
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Depends on how much maintenance it requires. And someone is going to need to be paid to deploy it and watch it to ensure that nobody fucks with it and that it doesn’t eat some park sunbather or something. And to make sure the grounds are clear of debris. Etc.
Don’t think you can count on just removing a salary here.
If a park sunbather gets eaten by a mower, did it really happen?
A second robot deploys to clean out the leaves and dead bodies.
If you want one for your own yard, there are significantly cheaper options. The husqvarna automower is under $1000 and can be integrated into Home Assistant. I’ve seen a lot of positive opinions about it in the HA communities
Nah, my yard is tiny and I don’t mind mowing it. I have a Ryobi battery mower so it’s super-easy to do. If I ever move somewhere with a bigger yard though I would seriously consider it. Especially as I already have Home Assistant running!
Hello fellow Ryobi mower owner. Or as I call it, my $500 gym membership.
I have a big old ride on mower as well but hate all the noise and the smell of exhaust, so rather just take three times as long pushing the Ryobi about.
Nothing quite like the satisfying thwack when it eats a small blackberry bush or snaps a runaway wysteria tendril.
At least the Ryobi is super-lightweight! I can easily carry it out of my garage and even with the battery it’s far lighter to push around than a gas mower. I’m hard on blades though with so many sticks and pine cones, no matter how many I pick up I always miss some.
I agree nice and light.
It’s not really equivalent to a gym membership, although I have to do a fair bit of Hungy Hippo’ing if I leave it for too long.
I’m about to move into my first home with a yard and I’ve been debating it. I have terrible allergies and even though I really wanted to as a kid, I couldn’t mow the lawn because I’d have snot running down my face half way through.
I haven’t had a reason to try again for a couple decades but I was gifted a mower so I’m gonna try doing it myself this summer. If it’s bad and I can’t find a local kid to hire, automower it is!
Oh my allergies are horrible too, I just make sure to take a Sudafed (can’t recall the generic name) before I start. I love that stuff, we always keep a stash around especially as you have to get it from the pharmacy and they don’t keep very much stock it seems.
Ohh Sudafed and I are already well acquainted lol
But if I have to take drugs just to mow the lawn, I’m definitely looking at alternatives.
Yeah, there’s a $600 model where you have to put in wire and the lowest price RTK is about $1k. I’ve got people in my neighborhood with both and they’ve both said good things about it.
The lower price for 600m² I saw here is 200$. It’s very cheap.
I built an autosteer called AgOpenGPS for our tractors that pretty much does this. Cost about $1000 per unit. We still sit in the tractor because there’s a hell of a lot going on besides steering the tractor, but it will drive the entire field without intervention.
Fields generally have few, if any, objects to consider. I’m not sure this is comparable.
At a quick glance on that site I didn’t see any information about safety. Did you come across anything?
I guess there is the line about object sensors, but would like to know a little more before deploying something with rotating blades (which is still pretty cool, don’t get me wrong)
It’s very safe. Any orphans caught in the blades won’t do any harm to the mower.
And can it avoid running over trash? Because if they automate the mowing you better believe nobody is out picking up the trash before mowing. And are they paying someone to ensure nobody vandalizes the machine so the cost savings is moot.
Well hopefully they bought one of those flame throwing robot dogs that sits crouching in the woods in case someone tries to spray paint a penis on this thing.
Okay somehow the words rock solid wireless emergency stop seem oxymoronic. I don’t care how it was programmed what wireless communication system uses or anything else. I have a hard time believing wireless emergency stops can be foolproof.
We know they can’t. Unfortunately the target demographic for this mower probably doesn’t care if the e-stop works.
Never seen a gas powered automatic lawnmower, only electric ones.
This is the size of a huge riding mower you only see used by parks departments and the like.
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You in the US?
Robot lawn mowers are very common in Europe. You’ll see these small electric mowers in people’s yards all over the place. Businesses also have them running all day out front. Never seen one in the US.
They are equipped with GPS, so they are locked to a specific area to prevent theft.
I saw this for the first time in Brussels! Our Airbnb host got a kick over how enthralled 3 American women were over the idea of a lawn roomba 😂.
I am in the U.S., yes.
Probably don’t use them here in the US because they’re afraid people will use them for target practice.
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GPS are very fancy ones, unless that’s changed since I last looked into it. A buried wire, “invisible fence”, has been the norm for all consumer grade ones I’ve seen.
That’s the style we have as well. In addition to the wire it also detects if it bumps into walls.
The ones I have seen are GPS locked and they automatically “return home” to the charger when rain drops are detected.
I think the wire ones usually do too. When they’re out of power and possibly if it rains, they go straight until they reach the wire, and then follow it home to dock.
Yes, I believe the GPS ones are also guided by a wire to find edges and find their way home. The GPS is mostly for theft prevention. Won’t work outside a specific area unless it’s unlocked from the backend.
Reminds me of this meme:
How many mowers do you think you could get your hands on before they catch you?
Probably one. I would imagine they have some kind of GPS on these.
You can see the little disks antenna on top.
I don’t know that I could fit it in my car.
we can prob balance it on my skate board and we can tow it.
“Charles, where’d the puppy go?” Sees this thing
Cricket‽
I had a job offer at a place that makes robotic lawnmowers, but they required you to go to Florida and Texas every year for “field testing”. We have sunshine 300 days a year here, and we also don’t have barbaric laws stripping people of their rights, so I turned it down.
That’s one expensive goat.
I think I would have a genuinely hard time not messing with this or trying to ride it. Both which are objectively terrible ideas nonetheless it feels really tempting.
Or hacking it to mow a symbol of “I thought what I’d do was I’d become one of those deaf mutes”.
I wonder if it is CAN bus? I bet it is, maybe it even has an unsecured OBD port. It might be super easy to get into its computer. If this would let you turn off or change its wireless connection you could have full control. If nothing I am sure this would mess with the GPS map and get it to do some weird mowing.
If it does have an OBD port they make over the counter wifi and Bluetooth dongle. So all you would do is give it an unexpected obstacle, wait for it to pause and pop the dongle in.
Not sure on these larger industrial mowers, but the little WORX robot mower I have does have a programming port open for firmware updates. There’s been some custom firmwares out there; no need for signed code or anything like that.
I really wouldn’t be surprised if this thing is unsecured. I bet the hardest thing is accessing a port while it is running.
Seeing this picture, my first instinct was to tell op to stand in front of it. Worst that happens is an easy paycheck.
Run and grab a package of hotdogs and we can finally get the answer to an age old question.
Put a pile of sticks halfway between a mowed area and an area that hasn’t been cut.
Draw a line right in the middle of the camera lense? If that doesn’t do anything then a stick person?
Worst that happens is an easy paycheck.
I would say worse that happens is a lawn mowing robot runs over me and I end up in the ICU.
And then you have every right to sue the beejezus outta whoever unleashed a robot into public that has super fast spinning knives but no obstacle avoidance programming.
Cool. You get cut to ribbons by a lawn mower. I have enough health problems as it is.
Or just don’t vandalise government property which is there to make life better.
I mean to be fair these are more intrusive thought type things. I definitely probably would never actually do anything like that…
ok what happens if this hits a child though?
I imagine they would make excellent fertilizer.
Plays Circle of Life from Lion King
Hopefully a major lawsuit at the very least.
Or a bad Steven King movie.
Is there any other kind?
(I kid, there were a few good ones… Stand By Me for one…)
I feel like things like this should have their safety system as public review of sorts, like a safety system public domain. Assuming this is on public property, but also if you sell to the general public too? It’s a pipe dream anway. It’s just interesting.
I don’t mean this in a negative way but I swear you’re like the Gallowboob of Lemmy, see you everywhere.
Contributors that don’t post like bots stick out
He’s got some personal issues.
Him and the Picard maneuver
Sad really. Somebody lost a job to that. Minimum wage probably, but still a wage.
That’s the jobs that robots should be replacing people with.
But there’s no UBI to allow the person without a job to skil upl into something else that a robot can’t do.
But there is still plenty of other unskilled jobs.
‘Unskilled’ is a derogatory word invented by the oligarch class to justify paying laborers less.
…And now with even more people lining up for those jobs because others have been taken by automation. That and in order to make a living you need to do at least two jobs per household.
This doesn’t allow for any time or energy to skill up into anything else and forces a positive feedback loop in keeping people in this bracket.
Edit: I’ve just read through some of your other comments and I want to say something about post scarcity. We can definitely approximate what will happen in the distant future by looking at current and past trends. Human nature is the constant.
We can look at how many unskilled jobs are created as a result of automation. From what I can see, the number of unskilled jobs created from automation is in the negative, meaning that less unskilled jobs are created from automation.
What systems are put in place for those without jobs? The trend is abandonment or exploitation. We’re currently in a glut of job seekers far exceeding jobs available both in skilled and unskilled areas.
But I digress… This was originally about an automated lawnmower being mildly interesting, which it is.
Sometimes its the only job available. The company with the contract to mow, do you think they now pocket the difference? Because thats what will tend to happen with automation.
Okay, so? Change what you do. Progress always does that. Window knockers lost jobs, miners lost jobs, now it is time for mowers. Which most likely won’t happen anyways since it’ll be the companies that own the robots.
Eventually there will not be jobs left to do. Then what?
Then we have reached post scarcity. People won’t have to work anymore. Also, no way that’s happening. There will always be jobs to do.
There are always jobs to do for the people who can get them. However, if robots and AI take all the jobs, then people can’t get jobs.
And, in a “post scarcity” world, do the people who control the robots and AI get to keep all of the money and food, or do you have a plan for that?
So there will be a different system once there are no jobs to do and people can do whatever the fuck they want. The reality is you are thinking of something that won’t happen for the next 2 centuries at least. There might be jobs that won’t ever be automatized. Right now, a single robot was mowing a park. Somehow from this we’ve jumped to “robot is replacing mowing” - to which the logical answer is “so use robots for mowing and find a job that is still needed”. The next jump to “nobody gets jobs” is a way bigger jump than the previous one and nothing that any of us needs to worry about.
I don’t agree.
Nah, the guy was still there. He had to bring the robot to the place where it had to mow the lawn and he was observing it to make sure it didn’t fuck up. Plus, I’m sure he still had to do stuff like weed whacking, so his job is safe for the time being.
I’m pretty sure this is a remote controlled mower, not an autonomous one.
It really isn’t.
https://wrightmowers.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=312
It doesn’t go into detail about how smart it is. It does say “drive by wire” but also say autonomous. I am pretty certain it is not meant to be used unattended.
There was a guy watching it who brought it in, but he didn’t have a remote control.
That is pretty scary. No e-stop when it hits a gas line. You just have to chase it down.
There’s fully autonomous mowers, I almost worked for a company that builds some.
I understand that their are autonomous mowers. I watch Hank the Tank. I just didn’t think this one was. Apparently it is largely autonomous but also has a remote.
Somebody gained a job programming and servicing that mow-bot; maybe even a whole team. Maybe the original driver wrote the path and manages it now.
I get the sentiment, and agree that there’s value in keeping labor jobs reserved for people who need them, but using automation isn’t inherently evil.
When my company moved our production operations to automatic lines and robots, they promoted everyone to machine operators, taught new skills, and paid out more. It may not be the way every company handles the change, but it can be done, and it’s a better path forward than forcing people to accept a life of hard labor.
I remember placing some large equipment in China some decades ago. There was a crane onsite but instead of using it the Chinese insisted on using many men with bamboo poles. We thought it was odd and hilarious that they had to do such make-work. Now here we are. This is why I litter and don’t put my shopping cart away. People need jobs.
Oh no, instead of someone doing mindless busy work, they can now live their own lives all day with no loss in productivity what so ever!
Whatever shall we dooooo!
Throw a tennis ball in its path and see what happens. It must be safe, right? Right‽
Mowing over a tennis ball isn’t harmful, I don’t see what this would prove.
Depends who you ask, eh. If your tiny pet gets underneath there it’s gonna be a bad day.
Fortunately, most animals do not willingly go anywhere near running combustion engines.
Well, not anymore. /s
That is fortunate.
You should meet my dog. A decent robot would be more likely to quickly stop than most human lawn mower drivers though I think.
You really shouldn’t be taking your hamster to the park in the first place.
True.
How about my foot while I’m having a lie down? Would that be safe?
Make sure your foot stays close to the rest of your body. If your foot is sitting out in the middle of the grass by itself you’re already in serious trouble without the lawnmower being involved.
God, I always do that, don’t I. Nevermind. I need to get myself together.
The tennis ball is just an analog for anything actually harmful. Testing its object detection without creating genuine hazards.
What things the size and shape of a tennis ball are you concerned about it running over?
If you’re worried about it running over a person, use something that looks like a person as your analogue.
