[Times photo: Fred Victorin]

Robomower is designed to cut an average American lawn — less than 5,000 square feet. It sells for about $500.

Robomower is a robotic lawn mower. Several versions are available commercially. Robomower, developed by Friendly Robotics, sells for about $500.

While you work, play or sleep, it cuts your grass.

Dennis Willis, North American product manager with Friendly Robotics, brought one to the St. Petersburg Times offices in downtown St. Petersburg recently for a demonstration. Painted a jaunty yellow, Robomower is cute. Able to reconnoiter an area without assistance, it's smart. As it chugged around a green swale, I began to think of it anthropomorphically.

"Does the little guy have a name?" I asked Willis.

"People tend to name it themselves," he said. "They adopt it like a pet."

Beneath all that curb appeal is a serious machine. Robomower is equipped with three steel mulching blades that produce a 21-inch-wide cut that can be adjusted to heights from 11/2 inches to 31/2 inches. It has cutting power equivalent to a 5-horsepower gas mower but is powered by two 12-volt batteries.

I admit, with neither pride nor guilt, that I have never operated a lawnmower. I found Robomower relatively easy to use. You peg a wire along the perimeter of the lawn that is linked to a battery-powered perimeter switch. You don't have to bury the wire, Willis said, just give the grass a few weeks to grow over it.

The mower cannot operate outside that boundary, so my worry of a rogue Robomower terrorizing the neighbors was dispelled. Activated, it's programmed to make a sweep of the perimeter, then begin a diagonal pattern of mowing the interior. Each time it completes a cut at one angle, it turns slightly to go at the grass from a different angle. It has enough power to run in this cross-hatch pattern for three to four hours.

"Halfway through the process," said Willis, "it's going to look like the haircut from hell. But if you let it finish the job, it's the best cut you'll ever see."

I watched as it navigated over small branches and in and out of holes dug around sprinkler heads. Willis said it can handle swales and most debris found in a suburban yard. If it encounters a large object, it stops, backs up, repositions itself and moves on. Robomower weighs 75 pounds, so children would have difficulty lifting it, but if it is raised more than an inch from the ground, the motor shuts off and the blades stop.

Pets were another concern.

"Our experience," said Willis, "is dogs go nuts for five minutes, and then they ignore it."

Sensors in the front of the machine pick up pressure from a dog pouncing on it, for example, that would shut it down.

Willis said the machine was designed to cut an average American lawn, "which is less than 5,000 square feet. Typically, the area is a plot in the front yard and a plot in the back yard. The side yards are often included with either the front or back. You could do one plot at night because it's very quiet, and the other plot the next day."

The mower stops running when its charge is spent. Willis figures the three to four hours that Robomower can run is more than enough time for each area. The battery pack can be recharged, or an additional one can be purchased to save time.

He said bagging clippings becomes unnecessary because the three blades mulch the grass, which is healthier for a lawn.

"And you can do it whenever you want," he said. "If it's been raining all week and your lawn service hasn't been able to cut your grass and you're having a party on Saturday, you can mow that morning."

Willis said Robomower is not designed to replace lawn services. "You're still going to need to edge, trim and fertilize."

The company plans to have a timer feature by next year, so you won't even have to be around to start it. Willis said that other products by Friendly Robotics debuting in the next few years are a personal assistant that can lift groceries from your car and carry them in the house and a garbage guy that will take the containers to the curb and back on the appropriate days.

I did not want to put too fine a point on this, but I mentioned to Willis that this new family of mechanical helpers would eliminate many of the things women have wanted men around for.

"Oh," he said. "Well. Hmmm."