Greg Janey, Vice President of the Residential & Landscape Contractor Business and Center for Technology, Research and Innovation at The Toro Company, joins Cheddar innovates to discuss the features of an all-new robotic lawn mower, and what this means for the future of smart homes.

Cheddar Innovates

How This Robotic Lawnmower Will Shake Up the Future of Yard Work

Welcome back to cheddar innovates brought to you by curiosity stream as you know Father's Day is around the corner so cue up that grilling fishing and of course taking care of the lawn. Well our next guest has created an all new robotic lawnmower. How cool is that? Just think of like the Roomba for your backyard? Well, joining us now is Greg, janey VP of the residential and landscape contractor, business and Center for Technology Research and Innovation at the company Toro. Thank you so much for joining us. Greg, you gotta lead us through how you guys came up with this. What it does walk us through the process for this lawnmower. Well the core of the technology really starts with our focus on time and ultimately creating a hassle free experience. And as we looked at a lot of different technology out there from an R. And D. Standpoint, our teams realized that we needed to create something that was new to the world which is our three D. Vision technology. And what that really does is it removes the need for any sort of boundary wire, physical barriers or anything that makes you forces the boundary to be around your yard. And realistically what that does is a really simple experience that's basically three steps and we're watching it right here on the screen. This is the actual lawnmower. So to set it up in your yard, it's really simple. You start by just walking it around your yard and that creates a three D. View of your property. Step two is to basically walk it around the perimeter, kind of like your trim mowing your yard and that helps that no kind of where it should go and where it shouldn't go. And the last step is just open up the app, tell it when you want to let it run in your yard and it figures out everything else. That is so cool. How would you say that this robot mower kind of fits into the future of the smart connected homes? Sure. So there's a couple of things, you know, from a smart zone technology. It's an intelligent machine that really learns your property and ultimately can cover the entire property every single day, creates a fairway. Look, when you start to think about smart home, there's really customers expect a connected environment these days and there's really two pieces to doing that. There's the communication network and there's these smart devices. So as we think about that, we all have wifi devices inside your home as you go out inside your yard and you go to the front yard or backyard. You ever been on your phone and then signal drops Wifi doesn't work that well outside. So what tor really specializes in is creating complex, working with complex properties like golf courses, municipalities and ultimately commercial lighting and what that does is it creates this communication network that's professional grade that we can bring to your home and now you can cover your entire property with one communication network. That technology is built into this robotic mower And we're really excited that it's not just the robot. We actually have a complete smart yard ecosystem that goes with us. So from smart irrigation and sensing we have technology that works off that same network that can reduce water use by up to 50% and from a smart lighting and outlets that creates that ambience that style that you can control with your phone and I personally use it for control my outdoor fire pit, I control my holiday lighting, patio lighting and my kids love it because we have a pond in our backyard for hockey and I can control all the lighting on the pond way behind my house and when it's time to come in I pull up the phone, I tap the lights on and off and they know it's time to talk about a smart home and now this just adds to it with this new mower. So talk to me about its capacity cause I know some people who have had lawnmowers before they say, oh I can't cut the whole yard because it runs out of the battery or what have you, how do you guys deal with that as well as how large of a space? So we've, what we've shared is this can manage up to an acre property which is the majority of homeowners and it's huge and the way that it works is that smart zone technology that we have intelligently learns the property to make sure it's covering every piece, but also knows when it's time to go back and recharge, so it automatically goes back and forth, goes out, maintains the property comes back when it's time to charge, so you never have to think about it and so you don't even have to worry about when it's gonna cut, you, just set it up one time and it does everything else for you. The part that customers love is when you mow your property, usually it looks great the first day or two later it starts to get straggly what this does is that most of the property evenly every single evening or every single day, you let it go out and it creates that fairway, look we call it always ready long. I love that you don't have to worry about you being the one to go out, get it ready. So I love that part even more. So how do you think this will play into the future of landscaping as we know it now. Sure. So there's a lot of different things going on in landscaping right now, a lot of focus on kind of time and productivity solutions where today you're seeing things like battery products come out but they're migrating towards more intelligent systems, which is where you see an automation like this, so you're going to see a range of this, some of this, you see from our portfolio whether it's residential into the professional automation solutions, we're having come out When you get into the data behind this, the operating systems. So customers are really trying to focus on managing their operating costs and we have software called Horizon 360 which is actually a business management software that not only manages smart devices like this but helps the contractors manage their crews, their billing everything around being more productive. I love that. So it's not getting rid of them, it's just enhancing their jobs for them. So I gotta ask how much will it cost and when will it be available? So it will be available in spring of 2023. We'll be taking preorders early this fall and right now we're firming up price but it will be in the range of like a writing more Oh that's reasonable. Especially if I don't have to do it and I don't have to pay a landscaper every time to come out and do it for. And quite frankly this is more of a labor extending technology for contractors. So it's not just for homeowners, we're seeing contractors really see this as freeing their labor up from kind of bulk work like mowing so they can take on more value added services and new customers. All right, Greg janey, great job from Torah, we appreciate you being here, I can't wait to get one of those. It's very innovative. I appreciate your time. Thank you for having me