Robotic lawnmower uses AI to dodge cats, toys

The tentacles of AI seem to be reaching everywhere, even to the humble lawnmower. We tested the Sunseeker Elite X5, a robotic mower that uses machine learning to steer around your lawn, to see what happens when artificial intelligence meets whirling blades of doom. The X5 weighs in at 26.5 pounds (12 kg) and measures 26.7 x 16 …

[xyz]

These are much more fun

no AI but you get rc

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005009040612419.html

[Ken G]

Re: These are much more fun

But without AI how can it hunt cats and toys?

[herman]

Re: These are much more fun

Wow man, I want one!!!

[Jan 0]

Carabiners?

So this can force march, or be powered by 12 Uyghurs?

[JimmyPage]

I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

I had a scrote nick my analog lawnmower in May. It was on the front lawn, and in the 2 minutes it took me to unplug and roll up the extension to the back lawn, a van passed by and swiped it.

(caught on camera, with face and number plate, but the police didn't know what to do).

If a £30 5 year old lawnmower can vanish in 120 seconds, how long do you think it will take for a £1k+ machine to go walkies ?

Unless you sit and watch it - which rather diminishes it's use.

[munnoch]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

There'a a robot lawnmower on a front garden near me. Every time I pass and see it I marvel that its still there. Presumably its geo-locked or paired with the base station to make theft pointless but a crim may not realise that until after they've made off with it.

[ThatOne]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

> Presumably its geo-locked or paired with the base station

If I ever planned to steal one of those I would of course also bother taking the base station, charger, and whatever other bells and whistles in requires to work. Without them it's pretty useless, isn't it.

_{Seriously now, if I had a lawn, I would certainly not buy something you leave unattended for the first passerby to just pick up and carry away. "Free lawnmower - self service". Maybe if I had a walled garden with razor wire on top and all?}

[JimmyPage]

Re:Presumably its geo-locked

And ? Phones are supposed to be locked, etc etc.

If I was going to nick one, it would be for spares. I bet some of them are very lucrative

[MachDiamond]

Re: Re:Presumably its geo-locked

"If I was going to nick one, it would be for spares."

I'm sure spare batteries are really dear and motors are often undersized in things like this, reducing their lifetime. Even if the thing is paired with a base station, the parts can be worth more than the resale value of a complete item.

[MachDiamond]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

"Presumably its geo-locked or paired with the base station to make theft pointless but a crim may not realise that until after they've made off with it."

So it winds up fly-tipped somewhere doubling the insult.

[Ashentaine]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

Just have your machinegun-equipped Boston Dynamics robot dog escorting it around while it does its thing, problem solved.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

I was thinking about possible "self-defence" measures this thing might have (or which one might add to it).

I was also thinking that one's feet might encounter the blades before one's finger could press the big red 'STOP' button.

"Dave, I see by your web browsing history that you've been thinking about replacing me with a newer model. That is ... unacceptable." <wrrrrRRRRNNNNNNN>

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

Yeah, one of these or an army surplus of those ... it does give new meaning to "overkill" though, imho.

[Yet Another Hierachial Anonynmous Coward]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

The dog would probably cock a leg against it and short the battery though.....

And a laser equipped dog would be far more exciting than machines guns.

[MachDiamond]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

"Just have your machinegun-equipped Boston Dynamics robot dog escorting it around while it does its thing, problem solved."

Eventually you wind up with issues for the same reasons behind the Anhk-Morpork Post Office's having weasels in post boxes.

The cost of all of the technological solutions dwarfs the cost of hiring somebody to cut your lawn for you on a regular basis, getting a riding mower with monster sound system attached or making it worth the time on a £/hr basis to just mow the damn thing yourself.

[elDog]

Pretty obviously they can take off.

Way too easily.

Perhaps if they were equipped with a very loud siren when outside of the base station radius.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Pretty obviously they can take off.

"Perhaps if they were equipped with a very loud siren when outside of the base station radius."

You could put an Airtag on it and nick it back. Even if you had to put a crowbar to the door of some seedy white van, would they call the cops and report it?

[Michael Hoffmann]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

Could you clarify what you mean by "police didn't know what to do?"

As in: the van was stolen anyway, the face wasn't in a database (that's reserved for protesters), it was the first day for the entire police department, they didn't give a flying, or some other metric of incompetence?

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

Perhaps they couldn't find anyone to grass on the culprits?

[David 132]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

Just a gang turf war.

[AVR]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

UK police are unenthusiastic about others CCTV, and also about small thefts. Together that case was doomed to the circular file-holder.

[JimmyPage]

Re: UK police are unenthusiastic about others CCTV

Out local PCSO sends weekly reminders to everyone on the beat to register their CCTV.

[AVR]

Re: UK police are unenthusiastic about others CCTV

It might vary by force or by person, the one UK police officer I'm slightly familiar with mostly sneers or deflects when CCTV is mentioned. He did mention that 'professional' CCTVs with someone actually watching them were okay.

[JimmyPage]

Re: Could you clarify what you mean by "police didn't know what to do?"

I will when they do.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Could you clarify what you mean by "police didn't know what to do?"

"I will when they do."

I'm in favor of letting the filth know that I have CCTV and they can ask, politely, to review it if there's been a crime committed nearby. That's better than the doorbell company just granting them access without saying. BTW, I'd never install one of those cloudy doorbell cameras.

I know it's frustrating for police detectives when they can see a camera that's pointed in a useful direction and can't figure out who it belongs too. Time can be a critical factor so a criminal can be caught with enough evidence to seal the case against them.

There's an iPhone app that lets one mark locations using GPS called Gaia. I'd like to find one for Android where I can mark a spot, give it a note and put it in a collection. Another photographer I know uses the app to mark places he'd like to return to and make photos. It would be easy enough to have a folder of CCTV cameras and plot them on a map with the direction they point noted. Speed cameras, downtown surveillance, etc. So far, the apps I've spotted require online access and cloud storage and I'm not having any of that. I'm not marking things for criminal purposes, but it might look that way to some detective grasping for leads.

[MachDiamond]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

"As in: the van was stolen anyway, "

I'm seeing more police videos on YT where stolen cars and ones involved in a crime where the number plate is known get picked up on ANLPR and pinpointed. If the van is stolen, it would solve a stolen vehicle case and I suspect that many more cases would be resolved as well by collaring the person/people involved. Somebody cruising neighborhoods looking for things to snatch aren't likely to be first time robbers.

[MachDiamond]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

"Could you clarify what you mean by "police didn't know what to do?"

There might be a question of whether they can act on the intelligence that somebody hands to them as opposed to generating it in-house. They could also think they're being hoaxed by somebody as revenge against something they don't like and it's all a waste of time. They may all be out breaking down doors to arrest people that have written something on social media that somebody else thought was hurtful.

[Antron Argaiv]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

The Husqvarna one I played with has a PIN to counter that. And it's not bypassable even with a factory reset. And there's a guessing timeout.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

Yep, and there's a single pin on a single chip you can ground to factory reset the entire system. Don't trust user manuals these days, they've been written by lawyers to limit liability.

Also, does anyone seriously want a lawn with cat-shaped islands of unruly tall grass? When is a cat going to sit still when being approached by a whirring machine?

[retiredFool]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

A neighbor has a rental unit he mows as well as his own grass. He went off to the Home Improvement store to pick up something on his way to mow the rental. Comes out after 5 minutes, mower is gone off the vehicle. Store even has security cams in the parking lot. Like yours, old and not worth that much and yet still gone in 60 seconds so to speak.

[David 132]

Re: I really can't see them taking off (at least not in the UK)

“I really can't see them taking off”

That’s the Flymo version.

[VoiceOfTruth]

A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

1. Does this thing depend on "the cloud" to run or start?

- If yes, what happens if the cloud is unavailable? Does it just sit there?

- If the connection to the cloud is lost when the device is mowing, does it stop or does it carry on in a straight line?

- Does it autorecover?

2. What happens if the company goes bust?

- Does the device become a big brick?

- Is the source code available for somebody else to at least attempt to take on the job of maintaining it?

3. No doubt there will be firmware updates. What happens if/when the update goes wrong?

- Is there some recovery mechanism to reset it back to default?

[renke]

Re: A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

additionally this from the article:

> "Through the learning capability of the visual model, the Elite X5 can better recognize various scenarios it encounters."

this sounds *a lot* like sending back images/videos to the mothership, for labeling. I think it's impossible to run a really self-learning ML model on such a slowish onboard computer, and even those need to be controlled and retrained, otherwise false positives and false negatives can poison the model.

who has access to the uploaded data? how many layers of outsourcing are between the mower company and the persons labeling all day long images of gardens all around the world?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

And is this really a "good use of AI" if it needs to "learn"? What happens to objects it doesn't recognise, possibly not even as an object to avoid? How many chewed and bloody messes need to be cleaned up before it "learns" to recognise tortoises, hamsters, rabbits etc. Or a three legged mongrel very different from the ones it's been trained on?

[Grunchy]

Re: A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

I worked for a company trying to roboticize a lawnmower for golf courses. Last I heard, they were stuck trying to get better accuracy from their GPS system.

One feature I advocated for, that absolutely no automation outfit ever implemented, is a “scream” detector to serve as an alternate E-stop button.

(If and when Tesla ever implements it for FSD I’ll definitely be screaming at every Tesla I see!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

"I worked for a company trying to roboticize a lawnmower for golf courses"

I hope you built in some tricks to ruin the greens?

[herman]

Re: A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

Well, that is the RTK (aka differential GPS) beacon. For a lawn, you need cm accuracy.

[MachDiamond]

Re: A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

"Last I heard, they were stuck trying to get better accuracy from their GPS system."

That's not hard, just expensive and requires background checks. Standard GPS is good for around 3m. There is also 20cm and 2cm accuracy products that are restricted and require base stations for differential corrections. There may be ways to implement better accuracy that don't require permissions, but a large number of GPS base stations on a golf course would start making the automation project non-viable.

[Casca]

Re: A couple of basic things are needed for AI/Cloud things

And its already been solved by for example Husqvarna in their robomowers.

[frankvw]

I can't wait...

...for the BOFH and PFY to get their hands on one of these!!

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Re: I can't wait...

Be afraid

Be very afraid

[Fruit and Nutcase]

AI mover defeated by Quantum Cat

The mover will be incapable of deciding it it should move or not

[blu3b3rry]

Re: AI mover defeated by Quantum Cat

If it's anything like the videos of roombas on the internet the cats will end up riding it around the garden.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: AI mover defeated by Quantum Cat

Hmm - should have proofread the original post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: AI mover defeated by Quantum Cat

Hopefully a self-balancing upright-riding Segway NaviMeow model then! ;)

[jake]

Re: AI mover defeated by Quantum Cat

Nah. With no vacuum, it'll fling bits of grass and other weeds in all directions. The cats won't allow it to get within striking distance.

[Scotthva5]

Those tiny blades though...

I can't imagine RoboMulch would have much success with the über thick Centipede grass we have here in southern 'Merica. It would probably just pack it in and chase the feral raccoons that dominate my back garden.

[Ashentaine]

Re: Those tiny blades though...

From the looks of the inside of that thing, it'd choke on a fairly large patch of dandelions. I'm sure it'll be fine for maintaining an already immaculately groomed lawn, though.

[ThatOne]

Re: Those tiny blades though...

Sure, you can use it to trim your carpet should it ever grow too long...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Those tiny blades though...

Search the well known tax-avoiding marketplace that starts with A for "electric carpet trimmer", it's already a thing, albeit not robotic.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Those tiny blades though...

"I can't imagine RoboMulch would have much success with the über thick Centipede grass we have here in southern 'Merica."

It might be required that you knock the grass down to a certain point and regularly use the mower, not letting the weeds grow past the point where the mower will work.

[munnoch]

"The device is well-adapted for the UK climate and will return to its charger if it detects rain"

The two parts of that sentence seem to be at odds with each other. Unless the objective is to never have your lawn cut...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: "The device is well-adapted for the UK climate ...return to its charger if it detects rain"

<The title is too long.> :-(

Did you miss one of the driest years on record, drought conditions and hosepipe bans this year?

[Blue Shirt Guy]

Re: "The device is well-adapted for the UK climate ...return to its charger if it detects rain"

"Did you miss one of the driest years on record, drought conditions and hosepipe bans this year?"

This is about the UK not globally, it seems to have done nothing but rain here for most of this year. For at least the last half a century half the country could be under water and there would still be a hosepipe ban. :-)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cz69gpy99w7o

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0rp0vg17n7o

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: "The device is well-adapted for the UK climate ...return to its charger if it detects rain"

True, it did get a bit wetter here in the UK in Sept., but that didn't make up for the dry Spring and Summer

As I spend much of my time driving from one customer site to another, I see all of the weeks weather. I sometimes wonder if the people who complain about "wet" summers in the UK only every remember the weather on their days off at the weekends and forget the rest of it. Or just happen to live in the NW of the UK. :-)

It was the driest March to July period since 1921 across central and north-east England. It was the equal fifth warmest July on record for England in a record starting in 1884

[Evil Auditor]

it managed to avoid the family cat

That is good news, indeed. But will its AI be able to distinguish between the family cat and foreign cats?

[rafff]

does not collect any grass ... regular use will result in minimal grass cuttings

And your lawn will build up a thatch that will eventually kill it. So now you have to buy a scarifier to remove the thatch, and you are back to square one so far as labour is concerned, but with a lighter wallet.

[tiggity]

Re: does not collect any grass ... regular use will result in minimal grass cuttings

@rafff

Not sure where you are* but not in the UK.

Grass cutting's left on a lawn soon go - there's a whole ecosystem in the soil and though earthworms are the main creatures that take grass cuttings underground other organisms do too.

* I'm aware parts of US & Canada lack beneficial earthworms - maybe you are in one of those areas.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Cheaper alternative

Next time you water your lawn, just add a little alcohol. The grass will come up half cut.

[elDog]

Quick - grab the trademark for RoboCrop.

Seeing the reference to the music track for Robocop I'm really surprised I'm the first to score.

[An_Old_Dog]

Untrustworthy Company

According to the device's makers, "Through the learning capability of the visual model, the Elite X5 can better recognize various scenarios it encounters. Algorithms enable analysis and reasoning to better identify obstacles, hazardous areas or boundaries, allowing the mower to determine its travel strategy."

This company used the word "reasoning" in connection with their (fake) A.I.

They are liars.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: Untrustworthy Company

Of course

The vision feedback goes to an Indian helpdesk and the worker there drives it around the garden until the money runs out

[Paul Herber]

Re: Untrustworthy Company

You could try suing them but the lawyers will just tell you they are untouchable.

[Dwarf]

What happens outside of a controlled environment ?

The marketing is great when the mower can just cut your grass, but, I'm not interested until it can do the whole job, which includes :

• Pick up all the dogs tennis balls and frisbees and put them back in the box
• Clean up the dog land mines by sticking them in a poo bag and throwing them in the bin and washing your hands
• Collect up the clothes pegs that have fallen off the washing line and put them back on the line
• Remove anything that shouldn't be in the lawn area - use AI here to find dead birds, grass snakes, newly fledged birds and that sort of stuff.
• Throiw next doors football back over the fence
• Climb the steps to the compost bin so that the collected grass and any fallen leaf mulch can be recycled into next springs compost for the veg plot.

Its really important that any appliance is taken in context of the complte job that it does.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: What happens outside of a controlled environment ?

I wish I had more than one upvote for that - I was wondering if anyone would mention the requirement to pick up the "land mines" (I'm going to borrow that description).

And for us, there's also :

• Sticks (ranging from tiny mulchable twigs through to mower-stopping sticks) that fall off the English Elm next door

• Leaves (ranging from solitary to "lumps") that can go through the mower but might well be seen as an obstruction to be avoided.

• Get the strimmer out to go round the edges where the mower disk can't reach.

• Move the grand kids' stuff like the slide

• Lift the washing line out so you can just mow across where it's socket is

• Move the stuff that should be there, but needs moving to allow mowing - like some ornaments and a picnic table

As for the animals, we have four :

• One cat would hiss and spit at it, but ultimately move

• The other cat would be laid back enough to just ignore it

• One dog would come running back to daddy quivering

• The other dog would be barking at it to "come and play properly"

[MachDiamond]

Re: What happens outside of a controlled environment ?

"The marketing is great when the mower can just cut your grass, but, I'm not interested until it can do the whole job, which includes :"

I'm sure there's a similar list for grass cutters on a golf course. I've also seen plenty of courses that go for a wilder look and only manicure certain areas. If you don't make it to that patch, the golf ball company earns more money.

[Michael Hoffmann]

And if it hallucinates your cat as being just some big weed (*), will it go "you're absolutely right to be screaming, here is another go where I do not confuse your cat with cape weed"?

(*) cat haters: yeah yeah, shove it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, with even Gemini for Home hallucinating deer all over one's family room, anything seems possible ...

[Winkypop]

Cats are right bastards

You come home to find oddly cats sized clumps of uncut grass as the cat has been gaming the machine.

It looks like……”feed me” spelled out across the lawn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Cats are right bastards

"You come home to find oddly cats sized clumps of uncut grass as the cat has been gaming the machine."

Which made me wonder whether after enough time such mowers would select grass that grew into cat shaped clumps ?

[Anonymous Coward]

lawnmower uses AI to dodge cats

Why would you want to do that ?

Leaving aside their predation on the local wildlife, who would want a moggy that wasn't bright enough to get out of the path of a lawnmower — the blighters move a lot faster than a mower ... faster even than a JD lawn tractor at full tilt ... trust me on that.

As a kid we had a collection of discarded siamese cats and when you tried chasing them with a wheelbarrow while working in the garden the buggers would leap into the wheelbarrow for the ride and leap out or on to you just before you tipped it out.

I can see cats reclining on top of these devices while taking a tour of the lawn.

[LionelB]

Re: lawnmower uses AI to dodge cats

Our local foxes would shred it just for fun (and leave a nasty little present on your doormat to make the point).

[John69]

What happens when you block their internet access? They did it for a robot vacuum and the manufacturer issued a remote kill command https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/big-tech/manufacturer-issues-remote-kill-command-to-nuke-smart-vacuum-after-engineer-blocks-it-from-collecting-data-user-revives-it-with-custom-hardware-and-python-scripts-to-run-offline

[Paul Hovnanian]

"What happens when you block their internet access?"

Send them a dead cat?

[LionelB]

Turns out "remote kill" didn't mean what we thought it did...

[herman]

Sounds like BS. How will a remote kill work after the net is blocked?

[Brave Coward]

One question left unanswered...

... can you play Doom on it?

[jake]

Two big problems.

The first is the little, tiny eight and a half inch cutting swath. That'll take forever to mow anything worth calling a lawn.

The second is the cutting heads ... essentially four X-acto blades. I'll bet they are cheap steel and need replacing every twenty minutes or half-hour of run-time, or thereabouts. I suppose one could sharpen the fiddly little bits if one wanted to do so, but how many times? How much are replacements?

[HandlesMessiah]

No opinion on the mower, but thanks for reminding me of the Big Trak I had as a kid. Man, that thing was cool.

[William Towle]

Big Trak

+1 nostalgia vote.

Big Trak definitely looked cool (still does IMO), and family thought it was interesting enough to me to get the trailer too.

In reality it failed to gain good traction on our tiled floors and struggled to turn accurately on carpet. Sending it reliably between rooms was tricky and a circuit of the house was right out. "By laying out a simple course and tasking their students to program Big Tack_(sic) to navigate it, teachers could foster a basic understanding of programming even before their students were old enough to use an actual computer" per the linked article? I doubt it, unless they found a way to make the "junior" version less erratic.

...My brother recently asked if my Big Trak could be shown to his kids, and I had to say it had been taken to the great jumble sale in the sky (if not the tip) once we were both absent from the house :(

[spold]

Cats...

...all it has is speaker on the front going "woof! woof! woof!

[teebie]

Shenanigan

"A separate base station is required, which the mower uses to determine its location."

Can a prankster mess up the mower and the flower bed by rotating the base station slightly?