County Sports Park in Florida Cuts Field Mowing With One Robotic Mower

Mowing that ate a whole day

A county-run regional sports park in Florida keeps its sports fields and an amphitheater ready for play and events. That grounds work is steady and unglamorous, and it consumed crew hours that were needed elsewhere. A county official described one mowing job as something that would take the crew a whole day.

Officials wanted those hours back for skilled work that required trained staff. The open question was whether an autonomous mower could take over the routine cutting without adding supervision that cancelled out the gain.

One mower on one defined job

The county commission approved the robotic mower in May. Officials assigned the unit to the sports fields and the amphitheater, so the first deployment had a clear and bounded job.

The machine came from the robot supplier and works the grounds on its own, which let the crew step back from pushing a mower.

• County commission approves the robotic mower in May.
• One unit is assigned to the fields and the amphitheater.
• The mowing job moves to the robot, and crew time shifts to skilled work, officials say.

What officials report saving

The public works director put the annual saving at about 600 man hours. That figure is the headline of this deployment, and it is an official estimate from the county.

A county official said the mowing job probably saves a whole day, or five to six hours a day. The same official said a job that would take a whole day now takes just three hours.

Read together, the numbers describe one robot changing how one crew spends its week. Officials say the staff were redeployed to skilled work, which is the outcome the county was after.

Where a single leased robot fits

Service Robot Co. is a vendor neutral robot integrator for US businesses. We select the right robots across manufacturers, then handle commercial robot leasing, robot deployment and integration, training and service through a nationwide US engineer network, so one partner covers the whole lifecycle.

The park's first step was one machine on one defined job, and that is a sensible way to run a robot pilot program anywhere. Our fixed robot lease payment on a 3 year lease is quoted after a site assessment, so many operators choose to start with one leased unit before they consider more.

This deployment was not run by Service Robot Co. We describe it because its scope and its staff estimates make a useful model for any operator weighing robot lease options.