Will robot lawn mowers replace mowing? Experts say that’s the wrong question

Robot lawn mowers are here, and they work.

Having just finished testing Mammotion’s Luba 3 AWD robot lawn mower, I’ve got a whole new perspective on the category. Genuinely impressed by its maneuverability and intelligence, I couldn’t help but think about what the future might look like for these machines. And there was, of course, one nagging question I kept circling back to.

Will robot lawn mowers eventually replace manual mowing?

After chatting with the experts at Mammotion, Segway Navimow, and MOVA, I came away with a different conclusion. The question isn’t whether robot mowers can replace mowing. It’s about whether people actually want to give it up.

What I learned testing one

Ed Oswald/Foundry

Before testing the Luba 3 AWD, I thought lawn mowers were just expensive things for people who simply didn’t want to mow. What surprised me wasn’t that the mower worked. It was how little I had to babysit it.

Once it mapped my yard, it deftly navigated around my dog’s outdoor bed and easily rolled over exposed tree roots. Although performance generally exceeded my expectations, it’s not perfect. At one point, the Luba 3 AWD tried in vain to mow my stone patio. It had mistakenly mapped it as a grassy area. There were no more problems after I manually re-mapped the yard, but it just goes to show you that these things aren’t infallible.

Tony Ho, Vice President of Business Development at Segway Navimow, put it best: “A robotic mower can cut more frequently, keep the lawn looking better, and reduce how much homeowners have to think about mowing at all.”

What does it even mean to “replace mowing”?

It’s the physical chore of mowing that gets automated, not lawn care itself. That said, the mower doesn’t clean up pathway edges or garden beds. It doesn’t have the ability to address the finer or more personal details of a backyard. Those things definitely still need human attention.

Mammotion actually made an interesting point here. Even if robotic mowing becomes more popular, they don’t expect it to erase the emotional side of lawn care.

David Chang, Senior Product Manager at Mammotion, told me about an early customer who said mowing was a rite of passage in his family. Even with a robot handling most of the yard, he still left a section for his son to cut. “The lines may not be perfect,” Chang said, “but that’s not really the point.”

And honestly, that tracks. For a lot of people, mowing isn’t just maintenance. It’s a reliable routine. For some, it’s part of their identity.

My dad is a good example of this. He’s someone that takes great pride in his lawn. Always has. Always will. I wouldn’t say he’s totally against robot lawn mowers (in fact he came over one day to watch the Luba 3 AWD in action), but he just prefers to do it himself. I totally respect it — those emotional roots run deep, you know?

Some folks are happy to step away from mowing (I fall into this category), while others will keep a patch of grass around to manually mow. That kind of personal connection may explain why robot mowers haven’t gone totally mainstream just yet.

Why don’t more people use robot lawn mowers?

Habit. That’s the obvious answer. But that doesn’t explain everything — price can be a major concern right now too.

People have been mowing lawns the same way for a long time… push, turn it, repeat. Even though robot mower technology is more advanced than it’s ever been, it still feels new. Unfamiliar technology makes people uneasy. I was skeptical, too.

And that flavor of skepticism came up in conversations with manufacturers as well. Segway Navimow’s Tony Ho told me the biggest barrier right now is awareness.

“A lot of homeowners still don’t know this option exists, or they don’t fully understand how far the technology has come,” he said.

Husqvarna

Price is just as important as awareness. For the sake of context, traditional bagged mowers cost just a few hundred dollars.

Segway’s Navimow X350, for example, sits around the $3,499 mark because it’s designed for larger yards and more complex navigation. That’s not exactly what I’d personally call a casual purchase.

On the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the Segway Navimow i110N. It’s less expensive at $1,099, sure, but it’s designed for smaller yards — and still significantly more expensive than standard push mowers, with more troubles in varied terrain. Higher-end models tend to handle complex yards better thanks to more advanced obstacle avoidance and mapping systems.

There’s also the reality that no two yards are alike. Hills, rocks, awkward corners, tight spaces… this creates real constraints for robot mowers. I’ve got just about every obstacle you can imagine in my yard, which is why I had to create a couple of no-go zones in the app. More expensive mowers tend to handle complex yards better because they’ve got intelligent features like obstacle avoidance and mapping.

Ling Qin, President of Robotic Lawn Mowers at MOVA, sees this pretty clearly. From their perspective, the challenge isn’t whether the technology works. It’s whether people understand what fits their yard in the first place.

A lot of homeowners are still thinking about older systems. Older robot mowers had boundary wires, complicated setups, all of that early-generation baggage. That’s not really how it is anymore.

What about landscapers?

And for landscapers, it’s not really about job replacement. It’s more of a shift in what gets prioritized. As Segway Navimow’s Tony Ho pointed out, mowing is often the most repetitive, lowest-margin part of the work. If robots take that over, landscapers can spend more time on things like trimming and design.

So what does the future look like?

Probably something in between.

MOVA’s Ling Qin summed it up well: “The future isn’t about replacing people—it’s about letting people choose how involved they want to be.”

Robot mowers may not end lawn care, even though they’re definitely capable of taking over the mowing bit. They may simply move humans from the repetitive work to the parts that still require judgment, taste, and pride.