The joy of homeownership often comes with the “joy” of lawn ownership. Just when you think you have a Saturday to do you, you see the relentless growth of the fescue and there goes the next few hours of your life. A handful of robotic lawn mowers are on the market now, but this one from Toadi promises to eliminate some of its competitors’ less convenient aspects. To start, you don’t have to lay out and dig a perimeter cable to define the boundaries of your space. Instead, on the robot’s first day on the job, you walk with it to show it the limits. From there it creates a map and uses its camera to know where (and where not) to mow.
Toadi can navigate around flower beds and obstacles like kids toys (instead of shredding them up) and can mow different zones like a front and side yard. Since it mows in straight lines as opposed to random patterns, your lawn looks neater and the same spot doesn’t get twenty passes while another gets none. Toadi runs every day but Sunday so the clippings are short, acting as mulch that doesn’t need to be collected (read: no bag to empty).
When it’s done trimming the grass for the day, it navigates back to the charging dock and turns on security mode. With its built-in infrared camera and sensors, Toadi can detect movement in your yard and will send a pic to your phone so you know what’s up.
If you’d like your Saturdays back, you can sign up to be one of the first to get a Toadi of your own (and knock a couple hundred off the price with your reservation). The units will ship out April of 2021, just in time for the return of mowing season.
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