Friendly Robotics RL800 Robomower

The Robomower is convenient, easy, robotic, and clean--and it transforms the world of yard work! Set up (once), turn on, and the Robomower cuts the grass on almost any surface--all by itself. Getting the system set up in your yard can take most of an afternoon, but the well-written manual makes the job easier. The biggest part of the set-up task is stringing the perimeter wire around your yard, marking the boundaries the Robomower will stay within. Once you're set, and the mower is on, the machine simply senses the perimeter wire and uses three mulching blades to cut down everything inside the wire. Thanks to the onboard computer, the Robomower can even learn parts of your yard as it mows, making it quicker next time. The mower is quiet, automatic, and the mulching blades mean that when it's done you don't need to bag or rake.

The Robomower is outfitted with safety features. It won't run at all if it's flipped over with the blades exposed. Likewise, it turns tail and backs off if its soft 360-degree bumpers encounter any foreign object (like a pet or toy or favorite rose bush). A theft deterrent system keeps the unit safe. The Robomower is very quiet compared to other lawn mowers, although because it takes longer to get the job done than a human with a walk-behind mower, what noise there is lasts longer. The mower works best on level yards smaller than 3,200 square feet, with the grass reasonably tame to begin with. It does not work well on hilly or overgrown yards. While it takes a full day to recharge the battery, a full charge is enough to mow most lawns. (The mower is definitely no lightweight, either; it takes two people to remove the machine from the box when it arrives.) The Robomower is definitely a smart idea for folks with physical conditions that make strenuous activities like mowing difficult, but it's also a great product for anyone who feels like there's always something better to do with a weekend afternoon than lawn mowing. Rechargeable power pack comes included.--Brian Trinen

RoboMower erased all my fears. Would it take too long to mow since it would cut a random pattern? No, RoboMower methodically cut my almost-square front lawn row by row, just like I would have done. Would it lack enough power to cut front and back lawns, about 600 feet of perimeter? No, it can do both on one battery charge! Would I need the rapid charger? No, charging over night works OK since it cuts faster than I expected. Could it handle my still wet grass without clogging? Yes, it cut fine with no grass build-up under the blade areas. Could it handle the slope in my back yard? No problem!

Things the manual didnyt tell me that I wish it had:
1) On sweeping curves the wire needs to be placed closer than the supplied ruler and instructions indicate. I moved it 3-4y closer to the edge, otherwise the RoboMower makes turns too wide. The tighter the turn the closer the wire needs to be. Plan on tweaking wires on curves a lot when testing!
2) When you place the wire down the first time, lightly place the stakes, as I found I moved about one in three. When you move one, at that point youyll have either too much slack or not enough. To adjust slack youyll need to pull the wire through many stakes. Donyt expect to tug wire through several stakes at once y the insulation will split on a snug stake and youyll have a bare spot! Carefully work slack under each stake. Be sure to leave enough spare wire at BOTH ends of your loop so you can provide slack on either side as needed. If only one side has extra wire, you may have to pull slack through almost all your stakes.
3) You want stakes loose when testing to adjust slack, but if you leave the wire too high off the ground and turn the blades on by mistake youyll cut the wire.
4) When I first tested, over a straight stretch of 30 feet I tried just one stake at each end, pulling the wire taught to the ground. That didnyt work y the mower can still swish the wire left or right an inch or two and not run the course you intended to test. Youyll need the wire snug enough so the mower canyt shift it. A stake every 10 feet or so solves that.
5) None of the literature or their website tells you RoboMower comes with only two perimeter wire connectors so you can create only two zones. If you need more you need to order the connector accessory kit.
6) You may need more wire than you think. I had carefully precalculated I would need only 450 feet, so I didnyt buy extra wire from Amazon in advance. Turns out on mowing day the 500 foot roll wasnyt enough (curves gobble up wire!) so I was running around town searching for more. I tried Sears who sells RoboMower but has no wire. Sears sent me to Home Depot saying any 18-22 gauge copper wire would work. Well, HD doesnyt have wire that small!. I finally found it at the Hoover Store, since Hoover stores service RoboMower (and will soon sell the to-be-announced Friendly Robotics Vacuum.)

My front yard is 1800 feet, almost a rectangle with three sweeping curves. RoboMower cuts that in 35 minutes row-by-row from house to curb, like I would in one pass, in a methodical manor perpendicular to the street leaving no uncut areas between rows. But the mowing pattern it uses on my 3600-foot rear yard is quite different. First it cuts at a 45-degree angle leaving uncut areas between the rows it cuts. When done with this first pass, it shifts 90-degrees to cut across the first rows, catching some uncut spaces but not all. Then it shifts again, hoping to catch more uncut areas. This behavior means some areas are cut repeatedly so it needs about two hours to mow the rear yard.

Mowing efficiency has a lot to do with where you train it to leave the edge to start mowing inside. When it starts mowing, it seems to ponder about what kind of area it is within. If started in a small leg off your main lawn and it keeps bumping the wire time and again after a short distance, it does into a different behavior than if it starts within a very large area and encounters the wire infrequently. However it starts seems to be how it will continue to mow, seemingly choosing the pattern it thinks fits what it first encountered. So, Iym experimenting with the ylearn perimetery function to teach it exactly how far to trim the edge before turning inside the lawn. My theory is if I start the mower in the same spot each time, and teach it to leave edge trimming in the correct place, it will always choose the better pattern for my lawn. If you start it in a different spot each time it may mow less efficiently at times. So, like a child, RoboMower needs a little advice.

Iyd rate this among the most fabulous purchases of my lifetime. The biggest problems: feeling guilty because youyre doing no work and dealing with your neighbors who stop to watch you watching your mower at work.


RL800 is great   April 26, 2003
Cave Arnold (Zachary, LA USA)
90 out of 91 found this review helpful

This is a great mower! I researched it and liked the reviews of the RL500. When the RL800 was available I ordered it immediately. It took a little while to set up the perimeters correctly for the 5 zones around my house. I have mowed my entire yard twice so far and have no complaints. I still have to do some trim work around the edges of the house and the fence line, but this is minimal. So far, this has been the best investment in my lifetime. I just start it up then surf the net, watch a movie, play with my two kids, etc. In fact, it is mowing one zone as I type this review! I periodically listen for the hum out the open window. The first time I mowed each zone I watched it pretty closely and made a few changes to the perimeter wiring, but now I just monitor it occasionally.

While researching the RL800, I was always looking for practical details on the size of yards that had been successfully mowed by the RoboMower. For any who are interested the details of my yard are in the next paragraph.

I have a large yard 22,749 sq. ft., which is mostly centipede grass although near the fence line there are a number of weeds and Rye that grows pretty thick and tall (4-5 inches in some isolated areas). I subdivided this into 5 zones each approximately 4,500 sq. ft. I live in Louisiana so the land is flat, but there is a 10-15 degree incline along about 30' of the rear of the house. The RoboMower handles it like a champ. I was a bit concerned about some tree roots that protruded from the ground a bit less than 1", but no problem. I have the RL800 set to mow at 1.5" and the rear wheels at their highest setting and it goes right over the roots of a few large pine trees. I was also concerned about pine cones, even though I pick these up before mowing sometimes I miss one or one will fall if it is a windy day. The RL800 has hit only one in the first ten zones it has mowed, but it chewed the side off of it and the blades are still sharp. I do not recommend that you do not try to pick up stray sticks and pine cones, but if you happen to miss one the RL800 seems resilient enough to take it and keep on going. I ordered the sped charger and another battery at the same time I ordered the RL800, but have not received them yet. Currently, I mow a zone a day (or night). When I get home from work if it is dry I pick up around a zone and start the RL800 about 5:00-5:30. I have it set to max run time, but usually it does a good job after 3 hours of work and I go out and stop it and take back inside the shop to recharge. When I get the fast charger I will post another review to say how that affects the over all efficiency of mowing with the RoboMower. ...


The pros and cons of robomowing   June 2, 2003
Gus Smedstad (Boston, MA)
59 out of 60 found this review helpful

Before using the robomower, I had to lay out a perimeter wire for each of the areas I wanted mowed. In my case, I divided my lawn into three sections, the back yard, the front yard to the left of my driveway, and the front yard to the right of the driveway. The wire is an electronic barrier, not a physical one. It's flush with the ground, and held in place by plastic tent pegs. The tent pegs and the wire come with the mower.

Besides the outside edge, I also used the wire to mark off obstacles. I have some mulched covered areas with plants, and some of the trees have mulch around them that's too steep for the mower, and which doesn't need to be mowed anyway. For islands, I ran a wire from the perimeter, circled the obstacle, and then ran a wire back parallel to the incoming wire. Two wires side by side cancel each other out, and the mower ignores it.

Not all obstacles require wire. I did not have to mark several of the trees in the back yard. The mower has bumpers around the outside edge, and if the obstacle is 6" tall and reasonably resilient, that's sufficient. It doesn't bump into things very hard, but a soft plant stem isn't going to offer enough resistance.

Laying down the wire was a lot of work. I ended up pegging down about 1200 feet of wire to enclose a 1/2 acre lawn, which probably took me about 3 hours total. Objectively this is more work than mowing the lawn a couple of times would have been, but it was more interesting than mowing. There's a little mental challenge in trying to place a reasonable curve around an obstacle or an edge.

The mower comes with a signal generator which I attach to the wire for the zone I'm going to mow. After I release the mower into the zone, the mower seeks out an edge and then follows it for roughly one complete circuit. The mower then begins criss-crossing the lawn, stopping each time it either senses the wire or bumps into an obstacle. It then turns slightly and reverses direction, mowing a strip roughly parallel to the first. Eventually it decides to take a 90 degree turn, to being mowing a set of strips in an alternate direction.

The mower is really slow, particularly since it misses large patches on the initial pass. It makes up for this by making several passes over the lawn. For each zone, I've let it run for the maximum time of 2 1/2 hours, and despite those patches it missed initially it mowed everything by the time it was done. I had no complaints about the result in the back yard. To my mind, it doesn't matter how long it takes, since my time investment is a couple of minutes to drive it over to the lawn, and then a press of the "go" button.

The mower is very, very quiet. It has three 7" blades, and it's battery powered, so I can hardly hear it from inside the house. The sound is kind of funky, like a turbine or something, since the three blades produce odd harmonics.

My only real problem came up with the left front yard, which has an unusual feature. It's a large depression that was intended as a catch basin for water runoff, so that rain goes back into the water table instead of the sewer. Some of the angles are just plain too steep for the mower. To be fair, they'd be too steep for any mower - the robomower is short and squat, and very stable, but a 40 degree angle slope is likely to tip any mower over.

Some of the slopes are gentle enough for the mower, so my initial attempt was to mark off only the steep slopes. This resulted in a cup-shaped obstacle, which actually had "lips" and a relatively narrow opening. Unfortunately, while the mower handled the slopes I left open well enough, it spent way too much bouncing around inside the depression. It never quite figured its way around to the other side, which it did quite handly with more convex obstacles I marked in other zones.

As a result, I marked the entire thing off as an obstacle, and made a tiny zone inside the depression.

Alternately, I could have mowed this manually. Driving the mower manually is sort of like playing a videogame. There's a controller on a coiled leash that has a direction pad. I push the direction pad, and the mower goes in that direction. The turning radius is zero, since the drive wheels can spin in opposite directions if you ask for a tight turn. It works, but it's really kind of awkward, particularly if I have to make several turns.

I do have to drive it manually with the controller to and from the lawn. The mower is heavy, mainly because it has a big, sealed lead-acid battery. It's roughly the size and weight of a car battery. It lifts out easily so you can do things like tilt the mower on its side to clean the blades.

The mower takes a long time to charge. The instructions say 24 hours, but it's more like 30 in my experience. This means that as a practical matter, I can only mow once every two days. This isn't really a drawback, since each zone probably only needs to be mowed every two weeks, though it was annoying when I was first starting and was impatient to play with the new toy. They do sell an external fast charger which takes 6 hours to charge the battery. They also sell extra batteries, again for convenience.

Overall, I'm happy with my gadget purchase. It's quiet, it does the job, and it requires almost no effort on my part to mow the lawn, now that I've invested the labor of placing the wires.


Initial Review: It's a smashing success!   May 18, 2003
49 out of 50 found this review helpful

With more than a little skepticism, I read every review I could find before buying our new RL800. How could such a device do a good job cutting the lawn without some assistance along the way?! Not to mention the price tag. Thanks, all of you, for sharing your experiences with the Friendly Robotics mowers. Your reviews really helped me make my decision.

Our lawn is OK but not the greatest, probably due to a lawn service that kept it too short, and burned it out in the summer by mowing it when it didn't need it. So cutting the lawn service cord is a definite advantage. Also, when I looked at the higher rated gas mowers, many of them were in the same price range. Until you figure you have to buy and store gasoline, do oil changes and perform tune ups on them. Not with the RL800. I figure the RL800 will have paid for itself after the first season!

I was open-minded enough to accept that it could actually do the job, so I ordered, despite some reservations about its ability to handle our 2/3 acre lot. Of course, had I ordered it a little earlier, welllll.... Let's just say it was like watching a race between the house burning (the ever-increasing height of the lawn) and the fire engines arriving (UPS/RL800 to the rescue!).

As it got close to its delivery date, I broke out the weed whacker and cut about a 2' swath where I planned to place the perimeter wire. I was just about to the end of the perimeter as the RL800 arrived! It's heavy! The box is just under 100 lbs. For one-person uncrating, be sure you remove the battery pack first. You'll be glad you did!

The RL800 manual is great. It's well-written, complete, well-organized, has lots of pictures, and tells you everything you need to know along the way. And if, like most of us, you don't DO manuals, there's a couple of quick start pages right at the beginning to get you started!

I wanted to make sure it could cut the grass well before I bothered running the wire! I read about manual operation, popped the battery pack back in the unit, and got started with my first test. After 2 passes over grass that was 7-9" in places, it looked great, and it looked like there were no real clippings to speak of. The mulcher works great!

Pop in the battery pack and things start to get exciting. The audio prompts, warnings and sound effects really make mowing the lawn something to look forward to. (I know, I know - I was a skeptic too....) The pack is partially charged when you get it so you can do some initial playing...ah hem ...testing.

Yesterday I installed 500' of perimeter wire in about 2 hours (I'm waiting for more to arrive). Caution: I left some long spaces between pegs in a straight run until I had tested the placement. Bad move! The front wheel pushed the wire to one side, and eventually tangled in the front wheel, stopping the unit. It didn't break the wire. So until you're sure of the placement, make sure you use enough pegs to keep the wire in place without drifting.

The controller must be at least 5' back from the perimeter loop so plan accordingly. I ended up putting it in a flower bed.

Once the loop is in place, calibrate the mower using the LCD controller (it reminds me of a Game Boy). Tell it what country you're in first. Then RL800 spins around a couple of times until it identifies true North. At that point, press "Go" twice and you're off to the races! If you'd rather have it cut the edge first, press "Go" once instead.

In the 4 hours + that it mowed, it completed most of the area within the loop to my satisfaction, though I'd really like to have it be able to complete a zone on one charge. I'm thinking that I'll probably set up 3 zones since the current zone includes the front of the house, the left side, and about half of the back yard. I have a 2nd battery, and an external charger on order to keep it charged.

As I write this, I'm watching (and hearing) my neighbor mowing her lawn. Not only is the RL800 pollution-free, it's practically silent. It's perfect for someone like me who's allergic to cut grass. In fact, as I stood there watching it mow yesterday, my allergies didn't bother me - probably because unlike traditional mowers, it doesn't raise any dust while mowing. Maybe it's due to the 3 smaller blades it uses instead of one big one.

Prepare to meet many new friends along the way. It's a real crowd pleaser. Everyone walking by had a comment. I met neighbors I'd never met before, and the funniest thing was watching the drive-bys. Very funny!

I'll let you know more about our progress later, but after its maiden voyage, we consider the RL800 to be a huge success! It's easy to use, fun to watch, non-polluting, allergy-friendly, and it does a great job! My wife thinks it's cute. I almost felt guilty standing there watching it - like I should be doing something.

Then my neighbor came up with the answer. "This is amazing. Don't know what kind of toys we can get to top this. Time for another beer, huh?" ;^)


Followup Review...   July 26, 2003
38 out of 38 found this review helpful

After a couple of months now, I can say that our lawn has never looked better, especially given the dry summer we've had so far. It helps so much to be able to mow only when needed, instead of on the lawn service's calendar.

Shortly after the last review, the additional wire, battery and external quick charger all arrived, making living with the RL800 even more pleasant.

I've since buried most of the wire, which eliminate any concerns about catching the perimeter wire in the front wheel, tripping over it, or catching it with a rake. In case you're wondering, I used an edger to open a slot in the ground, and gently pushed the wire into it with a "V" shaped dandelion weeding tool. Once the wire was a couple of inches deep, I could simply use my feet to push the two edges of the slot back together. It's time-consuming to do it this way, but I figure I'll only need to do it once, and having it underground will protect the wire from any damage.

We ended up with 3 zones (right side of the driveway to the back edge of the house, left side of the driveway to the back edge of the house, and the back yard). The two front zones finish on a single battery each. I've noticed that the back yard is close to finishing on a single charge, but I usually let it run a little bit over on the 2nd battery.

The external charger recharges a battery in just about the time it takes the mower to complete a mowing cycle, so there's always a replacement ready to go.

As someone else mentioned, I'm amazed, with all the interest it seems to draw, that I haven't seen another one pop up yet. No matter. It's nice to be able to make use of that time on all the other joys life has to offer. We highly recommend it!