The City of Waterloo’s newest employee doesn’t need to take a break – providing its batteries are charged.
If you’re in Laurel Creek Conservation Area by the cricket pitch you may bump into an autonomous mower placed there by city staff to help control the lawns.
The city says it is the first municipality in Canada to employ a robot to cut the grass.
“As we got the grass down to the height we were looking for, it started to fly around the field and we were actually really impressed with how easy it was to adjust and easy it is to clean and how much of a timesaver it was for our staff and the people that were cutting it before,” said Terry Henderson, supervisor of sports turf and parks for City of Waterloo.
The robotic mower can be entirely operated from a phone or desktop app and can be set to a schedule for any time of the day.
The city said the mower can report back mowing patterns, is entirely electrical and only needs to be cleaned once a week.
City staff say there were a few issues to sort out in the trial period, but now have the eco-friendly device is now operating at full power.
The city says it hopes to station more mowers at sports fields and parks ... in the near future.
