RoboMower – RL850

by Friendly Robotics

Product Description

Amazon.com

Early Adopters Pick: May 2003. The first fully robotic lawnmower that can learn parts of your yard.

The Robomower is convenient, easy, robotic, and clean--and it transforms the world of yard work! Set up (once), turn on, and the Robomower cuts the grass on almost any surface--all by itself. Getting the system set up in your yard can take most of an afternoon, but the well-written manual makes the job easier. The biggest part of the set-up task is stringing the perimeter wire around your yard, marking the boundaries the Robomower will stay within. Once you're set, and the mower is on, the machine simply senses the perimeter wire and uses three mulching blades to cut down everything inside the wire. Thanks to the onboard computer, the Robomower can even learn parts of your yard as it mows, making it quicker next time. The mower is quiet, automatic, and the mulching blades mean that when it's done you don't need to bag or rake.

The Robomower is outfitted with safety features. It won't run at all if it's flipped over with the blades exposed. Likewise, it turns tail and backs off if its soft 360-degree bumpers encounter any foreign object (like a pet or toy or favorite rose bush). A theft deterrent system keeps the unit safe. The Robomower is very quiet compared to other lawn mowers, although because it takes longer to get the job done than a human with a walk-behind mower, what noise there is lasts longer. The mower works best on level yards smaller than 3,200 square feet, with the grass reasonably tame to begin with. It does not work well on hilly or overgrown yards. While it takes a full day to recharge the battery, a full charge is enough to mow most lawns. (The mower is definitely no lightweight, either; it takes two people to remove the machine from the box when it arrives.) The Robomower is definitely a smart idea for folks with physical conditions that make strenuous activities like mowing difficult, but it's also a great product for anyone who feels like there's always something better to do with a weekend afternoon than lawn mowing. Rechargeable power pack comes included.--Brian Trinen

Product Details

Product Manual [4.04mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 98 pounds
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B000087QPC
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #285,510 in Home Improvement (See Top 100 in Home Improvement)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

141 of 144 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RoboMower Exceeded My Expectations, November 12, 2003

By 

J. Beacher "Programmer" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: RoboMower – RL850 (Misc.)

The last time I bought a product this life-changing was the original IBM PC in 1983. RoboMower makes you feel like youve entered a new era, where those Jetsons episodes we watched as kids have finally come true. The first time your robot mows your lawn is like using your first dishwasher, microwave, etc. How did we ever live without this thing?

RoboMower erased all my fears. Would it take too long to mow since it would cut a random pattern? No, RoboMower methodically cut my almost-square front lawn row by row, just like I would have done. Would it lack enough power to cut front and back lawns, about 600 feet of perimeter? No, it can do both on one battery charge! Would I need the rapid charger? No, charging over night works OK since it cuts faster than I expected. Could it handle my still wet grass without clogging? Yes, it cut fine with no grass build-up under the blade areas. Could it handle the slope in my back yard? No problem!

Things the manual didnt tell me that I wish it had:
1) On sweeping curves the wire needs to be placed closer than the supplied ruler and instructions indicate. I moved it 3-4 closer to the edge, otherwise the RoboMower makes turns too wide. The tighter the turn the closer the wire needs to be. Plan on tweaking wires on curves a lot when testing!
2) When you place the wire down the first time, lightly place the stakes, as I found I moved about one in three. When you move one, at that point youll have either too much slack or not enough. To adjust slack youll need to pull the wire through many stakes. Dont expect to tug wire through several stakes at once  the insulation will split on a snug stake and youll have a bare spot! Carefully work slack under each stake. Be sure to leave enough spare wire at BOTH ends of your loop so you can provide slack on either side as needed. If only one side has extra wire, you may have to pull slack through almost all your stakes.
3) You want stakes loose when testing to adjust slack, but if you leave the wire too high off the ground and turn the blades on by mistake youll cut the wire.
4) When I first tested, over a straight stretch of 30 feet I tried just one stake at each end, pulling the wire taught to the ground. That didnt work  the mower can still swish the wire left or right an inch or two and not run the course you intended to test. Youll need the wire snug enough so the mower cant shift it. A stake every 10 feet or so solves that.
5) None of the literature or their website tells you RoboMower comes with only two perimeter wire connectors so you can create only two zones. If you need more you need to order the connector accessory kit.
6) You may need more wire than you think. I had carefully precalculated I would need only 450 feet, so I didnt buy extra wire from Amazon in advance. Turns out on mowing day the 500 foot roll wasnt enough (curves gobble up wire!) so I was running around town searching for more. I tried Sears who sells RoboMower but has no wire. Sears sent me to Home Depot saying any 18-22 gauge copper wire would work. Well, HD doesnt have wire that small!. I finally found it at the Hoover Store, since Hoover stores service RoboMower (and will soon sell the to-be-announced Friendly Robotics Vacuum.)

My front yard is 1800 feet, almost a rectangle with three sweeping curves. RoboMower cuts that in 35 minutes row-by-row from house to curb, like I would in one pass, in a methodical manor perpendicular to the street leaving no uncut areas between rows. But the mowing pattern it uses on my 3600-foot rear yard is quite different. First it cuts at a 45-degree angle leaving uncut areas between the rows it cuts. When done with this first pass, it shifts 90-degrees to cut across the first rows, catching some uncut spaces but not all. Then it shifts again, hoping to catch more uncut areas. This behavior means some areas are cut repeatedly so it needs about two hours to mow the rear yard.

Mowing efficiency has a lot to do with where you train it to leave the edge to start mowing inside. When it starts mowing, it seems to ponder about what kind of area it is within. If started in a small leg off your main lawn and it keeps bumping the wire time and again after a short distance, it does into a different behavior than if it starts within a very large area and encounters the wire infrequently. However it starts seems to be how it will continue to mow, seemingly choosing the pattern it thinks fits what it first encountered. So, Im experimenting with the learn perimeter function to teach it exactly how far to trim the edge before turning inside the lawn. My theory is if I start the mower in the same spot each time, and teach it to leave edge trimming in the correct place, it will always choose the better pattern for my lawn. If you start it in a different spot each time it may mow less efficiently at times. So, like a child, RoboMower needs a little advice.

Id rate this among the most fabulous purchases of my lifetime. The biggest problems: feeling guilty because youre doing no work and dealing with your neighbors who stop to watch you watching your mower at work.

91 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RL800 is great, April 26, 2003

By 

Cave Arnold (Easton, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: RoboMower – RL850 (Misc.)

This is a great mower! I researched it and liked the reviews of the RL500. When the RL800 was available I ordered it immediately. It took a little while to set up the perimeters correctly for the 5 zones around my house. I have mowed my entire yard twice so far and have no complaints. I still have to do some trim work around the edges of the house and the fence line, but this is minimal. So far, this has been the best investment in my lifetime. I just start it up then surf the net, watch a movie, play with my two kids, etc. In fact, it is mowing one zone as I type this review! I periodically listen for the hum out the open window. The first time I mowed each zone I watched it pretty closely and made a few changes to the perimeter wiring, but now I just monitor it occasionally.

While researching the RL800, I was always looking for practical details on the size of yards that had been successfully mowed by the RoboMower. For any who are interested the details of my yard are in the next paragraph.

I have a large yard 22,749 sq. ft., which is mostly centipede grass although near the fence line there are a number of weeds and Rye that grows pretty thick and tall (4-5 inches in some isolated areas). I subdivided this into 5 zones each approximately 4,500 sq. ft. I live in Louisiana so the land is flat, but there is a 10-15 degree incline along about 30' of the rear of the house. The RoboMower handles it like a champ. I was a bit concerned about some tree roots that protruded from the ground a bit less than 1", but no problem. I have the RL800 set to mow at 1.5" and the rear wheels at their highest setting and it goes right over the roots of a few large pine trees. I was also concerned about pine cones, even though I pick these up before mowing sometimes I miss one or one will fall if it is a windy day. The RL800 has hit only one in the first ten zones it has mowed, but it chewed the side off of it and the blades are still sharp. I do not recommend that you do not try to pick up stray sticks and pine cones, but if you happen to miss one the RL800 seems resilient enough to take it and keep on going. I ordered the sped charger and another battery at the same time I ordered the RL800, but have not received them yet. Currently, I mow a zone a day (or night). When I get home from work if it is dry I pick up around a zone and start the RL800 about 5:00-5:30. I have it set to max run time, but usually it does a good job after 3 hours of work and I go out and stop it and take back inside the shop to recharge. When I get the fast charger I will post another review to say how that affects the over all efficiency of mowing with the RoboMower. ...

49 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Success, but requires YOUR OWN R&D and New Paradigm, May 3, 2003

By 

WINGMAN3311 "ARFCOM Gold Member" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: RoboMower – RL850 (Misc.)

I purchased the RL500 ... in December 2000, the middle of winter in Chicago, because of a special offer - two batteries for one and 6-mth financing...

Anyway, the RL500 has mowed my (previously bare brand-new) yard from the first cuttings just after seed as well as after laying down the sod. My yard is ~6000sqft, divided into 5 zones. The front zone is rectangular (40x25ft), straight sides. The back zone (75x25ft)is a large rectangle, with sides entirely of both long slender curves and tight 2-ft PARTIAL-radius curves, (flower beds at the far end, curved patio near the house, sewer drain and electric boxes at ends). The parkway zone has two rectangular sections totaling about 15x50ft, and a tree and lamp-post in the middle. The two side yard zones are 60x10ft, with one zone having a tree in the middle - Keep this zone in mind. The yard and zones, however, were carefully laid out and designed with the RoboMower in mind. (Download the Operating manual from www.friendlyrobotics.com and read the yard design requirements thoroughly.)

Hopefully, you have a rough picture of my yard. My ADVICE is: (1) Never lay a tree in the middle of a zone less than 10 ft wide. The RL500 has often got trapped on either side of the 10ft wide zone with the tree. The RL500 has no trouble navigating to either side of the parkway zones, which are 15 ft wide and have a tree and lamppost. (2) Pay close attention to laying down the wire - the supplied ruler is exactly what it's for. When laying out curves, long slender curves pose no problems unless the grass surface is bumpy, erratic, or uneven (due to plastic border edging or mulched for instance). Tight radius curves (I used 2-ft radius) will work if you run no more than a 1/4 circle (90 degrees) followed by a few feet of straight run or slender curve. This works because the 2-ft radius curve turns only 90 degrees - the same as when the mower navigates a square corner. (3) Never let the grass grow too high, and never cut when the grass is wet or damp. The mower will cut tall grass adequately, but this SHOULD BE DONE MANUALLY by cutting only a 13-15inch path at a time. This allows half the blades to cut the tall grass while refining the cut on the recently mowed other half. Otherwise, the likelihood of burning out a motor increases, as well as sharply draining the battery. I observed sharply reduced battery times and unusual noise - it didn't sound right so I went manual. In another instance, rain was predicted for a week, and had already rained earlier that day, a typical Springtime scenario - I HAD to MOW. The Robomower cut the slightly wet grass fine, until a motor fried. The wet grass particles accumulated in large clumps on the underbody of the mower, inside the blade cavities. Had I removed these clumps EVERY FEW MINUTES the motor MIGHT have lived. There were still two other working motors, but the smell of a burned motor is one you'll never forget. So ...(4) Fix a burned out motor as soon as possible, or it will strain the others (an electrician could furhter explain). A new motor cost about $100, not cheap if you burn one out every year. (5) 15% slopes or steeper ARE A PROBLEM, as the manual states. I soon filled in this slope with a flower bed. (6) Absolutely never leave it alone with small children. My mower draws crowds every year - adults from the neighboring golf course, but kids from everywhere. IT WILL PARTIALLY EAT THE SMALL ONES, as well as your toes, before the bumper senses them. (7) Never manually mow by walking beside the mower's front or side edges. This would seem COMMON SENSE, but every homeowner gets complacent, and will inevitably make a wrong turn (unless you're a radio control model car enthusiast). Those blades are an inch from the mower's edge and spin fast. The cord on the remote control gives you as much as 6-8ft to stay away.

The good news is that these lessons learned are easily corrected. The tree problem in the 10 ft wide zone required rewiring into two separate zones. The mower is now approaching its third season with no problems. It mulches, as stated, finer than other mulching mowers do, and never leaves lines or marks when allowed to fully attack every grass blade from every angle.

What's the paradign shift? I never mow the whole yard in one sitting - it would take 5 hrs! I mow two or three zones every 2-3 days, for 2-3 hrs, instead of once a week with a conventional mower. Remember, YOU'RE NOT MOWING THE GRASS. You can wash the car (keep that water away though!), prune, mulch, or weed the garden, or as is the case on fine summer weekend mornings, enjoying breakfast on the patio watching it have at it. Actually, when I'm at work and its a fine day, my wife takes the mower out. MEN: YES, YOUR WIVES WILL WANT TO ASK YOU HOW TO DO THIS! I swap batteries and never drain them past 2.5 hrs (4hrs on one chrg) for longer life (battery technology factoid. Also, the batteries never developed memory.)

Its quiet, environmentally conscious, safe (with the right practices), and efficient (in terms of time, money, gasoline hassles, cleanup, winter storage). The RL500 has been problem free in all respects (except the lessons learned, which were my fault), and the effect on the grass has been equal if not better than the conventional mowers on my nieghbor's yards. I would recommend it to anyone with the right yard and careful landscape design.