I do raised beds as well, so I have the same concern. But from my point of view the larger issue is that I'm almost never only weeding. Like, it's just not that big of a job.
But more importantly, time spent "in the garden" includes a lot of inspection and minor adjustments to all kinds of things— move plants on a trellis, pinching suckers off the tomatoes, clipping blighted leaves off of plants, ensuring flowers are getting fertilized, monitoring fruit growth, etc.
All of this stuff is an essential part of being in tune with what's going on out there, and I'm not sure that having a robot do one small piece of it is beneficial. Basically, this product doesn't really look like it was built by a gardener— it looks like it was someone who had a solution they wanted to apply elsewhere, and spent 15 minutes watching a gardener at work, without really understanding what they were doing.
In my opinion, that suffers from the same fundamental issue that it's covering a small portion of the visible work that a gardener is doing, but isn't accounting for all the observation and tweaks.
Basically I'm just not sure it's realistic to pitch this product to someone who wants to have an outdoor garden but spend little to no time actually tending it. I feel this kind of user might be better served by something like Aerogarden.
In any case, it's a much harder problem because watering even a small garden takes a _lot_ of water, so for it to be practical, you either need a robot with a huge (and very heavy) reservoir, or a base station at which it can fill up (which would almost certainly require leaving the garden bed itself, massively complicating the whole system).
I agree (as someone who spends all my time in my garden when I'm not at work). I enjoy being outside, getting fresh air, clearing my head, and tending to my own garden. There is something really refreshing about doing it and I'd have zero interest in automating away any portion of it. Just my 2 cents...
I brew up and spray compost tea in 5 gallon batches. A machine that would continuously brew tea and go walk around the garden spraying it everywhere would be pretty cool. But also far more of a niche.
what might be cool is a method by which the robot could tell you the garden needs to be watered. so some sort of sampler to make this determination. get really advanced with optics and we could eventually have it determine if there is a bug problem or disease.
the robot doesn't necessarily need to do all the work, just identify what needs to be done beyond its specialty
It would have to be a much stronger robot to haul around a garden hose. Those things can easily weigh several kilograms when they're full of water, not to mention they can get caught on obstructions rather easily.
There's always a sock waiting to be stuck on somewhere...
But I don't get it why they won't make the robot reverse a short bit and try to go around instead of just rolling over and die.
That would solve 99% of the situations I have rescued my old Roomba and current Neato from. It's very seldom they actually got something entangled in their brushes.
It already is damaging things as it is. The Neato have peeled a USB cable and an audio cable. It also have chewed on a few laptop charger cables but they seems to be tougher so no damage. Hopefully it won't peel something that could be dangerous.
I doubt it could be that hard to detect an unusually low rotation speed. Now it seems to chug until it really stalls. Instead it should stop the brushes immediately and retreat, then retry with just the fan running.
I'd settle for a garden hose that doesn't perish from UV damage after a season and doesn't kink every 7 seconds. Sounds like a pretty simple thing to get - it isn't.
Things would get tangled in a hurry with the hose getting caught up or stuck. Low pressure would help but I still don't think it's viable on anything but row based gardens.
My family kept a large garden for the duration of my childhood. I was made to weed it. It was absolutely that big of a job. It took a couple hours. Every day.
But more importantly, time spent "in the garden" includes a lot of inspection and minor adjustments to all kinds of things— move plants on a trellis, pinching suckers off the tomatoes, clipping blighted leaves off of plants, ensuring flowers are getting fertilized, monitoring fruit growth, etc.
All of this stuff is an essential part of being in tune with what's going on out there, and I'm not sure that having a robot do one small piece of it is beneficial. Basically, this product doesn't really look like it was built by a gardener— it looks like it was someone who had a solution they wanted to apply elsewhere, and spent 15 minutes watching a gardener at work, without really understanding what they were doing.