A brilliant concept flashed into my mind today as I was walking my dog across the crabgrass on my lawn, or as I call it, the Lower Pasture. Why not invent a flying lawnmower?
I know what you're going to say, "They already have those." Well, no they don't. What they have are model airplanes that look like lawnmowers, and fly, not actual flying lawnmowers that cut grass.
What would it take? A drone that hovers a couple of inches off the ground, and can be remotely controlled. They've had a lawnmower that has no wheels for decades -- it works like a hovercraft, riding on a cushion of air. I think some Englishman invented it. Nobody uses them, so they must be shit, but at least the concept of a flying lawnmower exists. With todays robotic drone technology, it must be possible to create a drone with a cutting blade that flies, and that could be limited to a flight level of a few inches above the ground.
I envision autonomous grass-cutting drones, zipping across my vast lawns like little flying buzz saws, scalping the grass and scattering the clippings behind them. The trouble with crawler drone grass-cutters is that they are too slow. We need something that will swoop across a lawn, slicing it off at 100 MPH at each pass.
Can it be mere chance that this concept came into my mind on the 4th of July? I think not! This is the quintessence of the American dream. Some day in the future, I will sit on my deck with a ice tea beading in my hand, and a floppy fly hat on my head, squinting at my autonomous drones as they zip back and forth across my hills, showering cut grass behind them.
It is a glorious vision of the future, which I know we have the ingenuity to attain. We went to the moon, we can cut our grass with flying revolving steel blades. What could possibly go wrong?
A brilliant concept flashed into my mind today as I was walking my dog across the crabgrass on my lawn, or as I call it, the Lower Pasture. Why not invent a flying lawnmower?
I know what you're going to say, "They already have those." Well, no they don't. What they have are model airplanes that look like lawnmowers, and fly, not actual flying lawnmowers that cut grass.
What would it take? A drone that hovers a couple of inches off the ground, and can be remotely controlled. They've had a lawnmower that has no wheels for decades -- it works like a hovercraft, riding on a cushion of air. I think some Englishman invented it. Nobody uses them, so they must be shit, but at least the concept of a flying lawnmower exists. With todays robotic drone technology, it must be possible to create a drone with a cutting blade that flies, and that could be limited to a flight level of a few inches above the ground.
I envision autonomous grass-cutting drones, zipping across my vast lawns like little flying buzz saws, scalping the grass and scattering the clippings behind them. The trouble with crawler drone grass-cutters is that they are too slow. We need something that will swoop across a lawn, slicing it off at 100 MPH at each pass.
Can it be mere chance that this concept came into my mind on the 4th of July? I think not! This is the quintessence of the American dream. Some day in the future, I will sit on my deck with a ice tea beading in my hand, and a floppy fly hat on my head, squinting at my autonomous drones as they zip back and forth across my hills, showering cut grass behind them.
It is a glorious vision of the future, which I know we have the ingenuity to attain. We went to the moon, we can cut our grass with flying revolving steel blades. What could possibly go wrong?
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