New Automower from Swedish Husqvarna

Credit: Husqvarna

Market leading Husqvarna has created a compact and reliable Automower® robotic lawnmower for small gardens and lawns. The new Automower® 305 robotic lawnmower represents the third generation of silent, automatic robotic lawn mowers that provide a perfect, trouble-free lawn. The compact and lightweight (7 kg) newcomer targets homeowners with smaller gardens with lawns, up to 500 m2. As with its bigger siblings from Husqvarna, it offers homeowners carefree mowing throughout the season. Like all Husqvarna robotic lawn mowers the new model has an advanced Anti Theft System with an alarm and a personal PIN code that makes the machine useless if stolen. The Automower® 305 robotic lawnmower is equipped with a rechargeable Li-lon battery and makes sure that the grass is perfectly cut 24-7.  The recommended retail price for Husqvarna Automower® 305 is 1.490 EUR (~US $ 2.300).

Check out the video below for a unboxing demo

100.000 Robotic Lawn Mowers from Sweden

Image: Husqvarna

Husqvarna Automower®, the world's first robotic lawn mower, counts 100,000 units sold since 1995. Automower®, now sold in 30 countries, is a fully automatic and silent robotic lawn mower for homeowners and hotels. Without emissions, day or night, rain or shine, it fertilizes and cuts the lawn to perfection, all by itself.

Husqvarna, the world's largest producer of lawn mowers, chainsaws and portable petrol-powered garden equipment such as trimmers and blowers, intends to implement a number of structural changes in order to reduce costs and improve the Group's competitiveness. The measures are aimed at eliminating overlap and duplication within production and administration, and involve consolidation of production in Sweden and the US, and of the sales organization in Europe and Asia/Pacific.

The changes are scheduled to be implemented in 2009-2010 and will affect approximately 1,200 employees. As a result of an increase in the number of employees in other production facilities in Poland and China, the net reduction in the number of employees is estimated at 400.

iRobot Lawn mower

Robot Stock News reports that iRobot has designed a lawn mowing robot according to a new patent filing. iRobot considers various configurations including an all-electric model and a gasoline-electric hybrid, as well as various shapes ranging from the familiar Roomba-like disc to a pentagon shape to a four-wheeled model to a "tombstone" shape.

That´s good news for consumers who still have to pay a high price for automated garden assistence. Innovation and competition is really needed on the lawn mover robot market dominated by a few manufacturers such as Swedish Electrolux, Italian Ambrogio and Australian Friendly Robotics. When iRobot entered the market for home robotics with its iRoomba vaccum cleaning robot the market lifted up. Lets hope iRobot can repeat its success strategy in the lawn mover segment too.