Similar to my business idea regarding automated window washers, yet I think this one would potentially be even easier to implement. I was driving down our ring road here in Calgary and seeing all the grass growing very fast in the median and around the overpasses. I also saw a tractor/lawn mower left by the city over the weekend in one of the medians and it sparked a thought... Why couldn't lawn mowers be automated? It turns out somebody already has that idea. Check this link out: http://www.robomow.com/
These aren't industrial size/strength machines, though. I guess there are a couple of challenges with using an automated mower in an industrial/municipal context:
- Keeping them secure - they'd potentially be easy to steal. You could get around this by putting a GPS tracker on the unit something like this: http://www.gpspolice.com/
- More varied terrain - the mowers would have to content with steeper hills and soggy or muddy grass that they could get stuck in. The unit would have to be able to manage/mitigate these.
- Safety - The units would need to be well tested with emergency shut offs logic in a bunch of places to ensure the public's safety.
