Honda debuts its first-ever electric autonomous zero-turn riding lawn mower

Honda today launched its first prototype battery-powered electric autonomous zero-turn riding mower (yes, it actually drives itself).

Honda’s electric autonomous zero-turn riding mower

The new prototype is called the Honda Autonomous Work Mower (AWM). Honda says it successfully field-tested a proof of concept version of the AWM with a US commercial landscape company earlier this year. Next year, it’s going to launch a pilot program in which it’s looking for companies to test out the AWM in the field (literally).

The AWM can be manually driven, or it can operate in autonomous mode. The operator sets up autonomous operation by using a “Teaching” mode in which the mower is driven to create a mowing route map using a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). The AWM can learn multiple mowing routes and patterns that it then saves to a cloud server.

Once a route is saved, the operator launches the AWM’s autonomous operation in “Playback” mode. With the AWM in the starting position, the operator downloads the specified mowing route map using a tablet or smartphone. The AWM then begins autonomous operation and mows according to the map route.

Honda says its AWM can maintain straight tracking on hills and rough terrain with two-motor traction control that keeps the tires from slipping. It also has four radar and four LiDAR sensors for obstacle detection.

The AWM automatically reduces blade rotation at low speeds and low loads to reduce power consumption. At high loads, the AWM automatically reduces its speed to prevent grass clogging and uncut grass.

You can check out the AWM in the video below:

City Dwellers’s Take

This is pretty neat, although annoyingly and inexplicably, Honda doesn’t provide any information about power specs and charging time for its prototype. It’s also not the very first of its kind; Bobcat, for example, launched a similar model in October of last year. The more the merrier. Fossil fuel lawn mowers are noisy and stinky.

I visited John Deere in Texas earlier this year and rode in huge autonomous farm equipment that can be set to run in the middle of the night, thus making farming more efficient when time is of the essence. Pretty amazing stuff – but it wasn’t yet electric. We’re going to see a lot more autonomous EVs in the next couple years.

Read more: Here’s what I found out in Texas about John Deere’s electric backhoe

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