By Sara Jensen
A MACHINE FOR ALL SEASONS: Autonomous Robot Provides Snow and Lawn Care Abilities
Left Hand Robotics has added large area mowing capabilities to its autonomous robot, enabling use of the machine throughout the entire year.
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eft Hand Robotics first introduced its autonomous snow clearing robot in 2017. Since then it has been expanding the presence of its machines into the market and the applications in which the machine can be used. As such, the company has introduced a new attachment for the autonomous machine enabling large area autonomous mowing. “So far in the United States no other company [is offering] a gasoline-powered large area mower that we know of,” says Mike Ott, CTO of Left Hand Robotics. He notes that while smaller battery-powered robots similar to a Roomba have been available for several years, nothing yet has entered the market like what Left Hand Robotics now offers. “What we’ve done is basically taken our autonomous platform that we started out with for snow clearing and launched the ability do mowing with the machine,” says Ott.
Automatic detection eases change of operation Ott says that from the beginning, the RT-1000 autonomous robot for turf and snow—as the machine is now called—was designed with the ability to support different front and rear attachments. Adding an attachment for large area mowing allows the machine to now be used in places such as sports complexes, sod farms, city parks, large corporate lawns and more. “That’s a
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major market improvement for us because there are people out there looking for that kind of equipment,” he says. The main benefit to enabling use of additional attachments is the autonomous machine can now be used all year long. It can go from snow clearing to mowing simply by changing the attachment at the front of the machine. “Eighty percent or more of the investment cost is now used 12 months out of the year,” says Ott. All of the technology resides within the tractor— the autonomous navigation, obstacle detection, etc.—so there is a common platform no matter what type of application the machine is being used in. Once it detects a different attachment has been added, software changes occur which ensure the machine operates accordingly. When an attachment is added to the tractor, it is able to recognize what type of attachment it is based on the electrical connections that are made. If a snow clearing broom is added, the software can assume the machine is being used in winter conditions and therefore immediately use a blend of Left Hand Robotics’ obstacle detection sensors which are tailored for use in snow. Radar and LIDAR sensors are included on every machine; it’s just how the software blends feedback from those two different sensors which changes based on the attachment placed on the autonomous machine, says Ott. “What our software does is dynamically
SNOW PRO | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2020
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