Missouri S&T Grad Aims to Assist Weary Mowers with AI & Bots

Peeking into the future your lawn care and, landscaping tools may very well include robots and occasional software updates....???

When I was a young I got “Tom Sawyered” into mowing the lawn. I romanticized the responsibility, the manliness of handling the mower, and the satisfying sense of accomplishment.

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It didn’t take long for me to realize that everything I had imagined it being was overblown. Being responsible meant you were approved for blame. That feeling of manliness melted away in the summertime heat, and the satisfaction of a job well done morphed into pure exhaustion. Yes our yard was pretty big (especially for a kid).

The future of lawn care will include you leading a team of bots

Each spring though I manned up and got after it until the grass quit growing in the fall. There was comfort however in knowing I wasn’t alone in my efforts. Countless other kids were push mowing their way through summer too week by week, blade by blade.

Dr. George Holmes Jr. was in this club. Mowing summer after summer in the St. Louis heat. Holmes though while attending Missouri S&T for his undergraduate degree he realized he had a passion for robotics. Following an internship with Honda he decided to get his Ph.D. training AI how to work with robots helping patients in the healthcare industry. Another S&T student, Katie Bonnett helped Holmes as an undergrad with management, infrastructure placement and ultimately software design. The two created “Hire Henry” a robotics company featuring grass mowing bots.

The applications are far wider than we can contemplate, but practically what they’ve created should make lawn maintenance easier and quicker for homeowners, landscaping and mowing companies. Eventually the advent of “Hire Henry” will forever change summers for growing kids across the country.

The day will come when you’ll say to a younger generation “We used to have to push those things ourselves” before you ultimately holler at them to get off the lawn….