A Texas Regional Airport Puts Three RTK GPS Mowers on Its Turf

Turf that keeps coming back on a schedule

An airport runs its grounds on a demanding clock. Grass around runways, taxiways and terminal approaches has to meet a standard crews can defend, and that work returns on a steady rhythm through the growing season. Every hour a mower spends on that turf is an hour someone has to schedule, staff and supervise.

The operation in this study set a clear goal for its mowing program. The target was a labor reduction of 8 to 20 percent, a band wide enough to test whether robotic mowing could carry real weight across a large property. Cost per acre mattered as much as hours, because a labor saving that drives up upkeep spending does not fix the budget.

• Keep turf to a standard on a fixed mowing calendar
• Reduce the labor hours tied up in routine mowing
• Hold cost per acre steady or lower while doing it

Three GPS guided mowers and a phased rollout

The airport put three mowers guided by RTK GPS onto its turf. RTK, short for real time kinematic, corrects satellite position signals so a machine can follow a set path with very tight positional accuracy. That precision lets a mower work a boundary without a person walking alongside it.

Robot programs of this kind usually move in steps rather than all at once. The sequence below is the path a facility typically follows, and it is the same path a robot lease program would follow.

• Run a site assessment and map turf boundaries and obstacles
• Set the mowing plan and confirm satellite coverage across the site
• Complete robot deployment and integration with existing mowing schedules, then go live with support
• Train crews to supervise the mowers and handle exceptions
• Keep the fleet on a service schedule with on-site dispatch when a unit needs attention

Labor and cost results as the airport reports them

The airport reports labor savings of over 8 percent from its robotic mowing program. That sits at the lower end of the 8 to 20 percent reduction it had set as its target, which is a sensible place to start for a first season on a large property.

The airport also reports a lower cost per acre. Taken together, the two results describe a fleet that takes a share of routine mowing hours off crews while holding or lowering what each acre costs to keep. Labor hours and cost per acre are the two figures worth tracking side by side.

Neither figure should be read as a guarantee for another site. Turf size, mowing frequency, terrain and crew scheduling all shape what a fleet can save, so the reported result works best as a planning benchmark rather than a forecast.

How a lease fits a mowing program like this one

Service Robot Co. is a full service, OEM neutral integrator for US businesses. We select the right robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service each unit through a nationwide US engineer network. A facility deals with one partner and one number, not a chain of vendors.

Our robots are leased, not sold. Robot lease options run on a three year lease with one fixed lease payment quoted after a site assessment, and that assessment covers mapping, boundaries and satellite coverage. A facility can start with one leased unit as a robot pilot program, then widen the fleet once the labor and cost numbers are in.

Any facility weighing a mowing program like this one should ask the same questions the airport answered: how many crew hours go to routine mowing today, what reduction is realistic, and what cost per acre looks like before and after.