1 of 2
Photos by Sarah Owens.
The city of Homewood has a few robotic helpers on their side, saving time and resources when it comes to cutting grass.
2 of 2
Photo by Sarah Owens
The city of Homewood has a few robotic helpers on their side, saving time and resources when it comes to cutting grass and painting stripes. This robot cuts grass on the city's sports fields cared for by Homewood Parks & Recreation.
Homewood Parks & Recreation has a lot of ground to cover, and an autonomous robotic fleet is making the job easier.
Maintaining the Homewood Athletic Complex and Soccer Park used to require hours of hands-on work, but for the past five years, robots have transformed the way fields are mowed and striped. These machines operate using satellite and cell signals, reducing the need for manual labor.
“Some of the main reasons we use these robots are because we're understaffed,” Athletic Facility Supervisor William Clements said. “That can be attributed to a lot of things. … The pay scale is not great. The benefits are, but they can't see past the pay scale, so it's hard to keep people, which is understandable, and this is not the only industry that's like that.”
Before automation, a four-person crew was responsible for maintaining 11 baseball, softball and T-ball fields, the Mega Field (a multipurpose field), a six-acre multipurpose field, tennis courts, Waldrop Stadium, the West Homewood Athletic Center, Weygand Field and the Homewood Soccer Complex — entirely by hand.
Photo by Sarah Owens
The city of Homewood has a few robotic helpers on their side, saving time and resources when it comes to cutting grass and painting stripes.
The soccer complex alone has three full-size fields, each nearly three acres. While some areas, like the Mega Field, six-acre multipurpose field and select baseball infields, use turf, the rest are grass and require regular mowing. Both grass and turf fields also need striping, which is where the robots come in — two for painting and two for mowing.
“The old way was we had to mark our four corners and run string lines. We had to take our measurements to our big box [of the soccer field]. We had to take our measurements to our small box,” Clements said. “A full-size 11 versus 11 soccer field, we could do that with three people in roughly six hours, and it would take six gallons of paint. Now, we can do it with one person, two and a half gallons of paint, in 20 minutes.”
The two painting machines, called Turf Tanks, use real-time kinematic (RTK) technology — a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) system that provides centimeter-level accuracy by correcting satellite signal errors in real time.
Photo by Sarah Owens
The city of Homewood has a few robotic helpers on their side, saving time and resources when it comes to cutting grass and painting stripes.
“Set the GPS station up, turn the robot on, turn the tablet on, and it'll show you an overhead view of the field,” Clements said. “I connect it to the robot, pick my white 11 v 11 field and load my paint, tell it to start painting. It's very nice.”
The two mower robots operate autonomously at the Homewood Soccer Complex, running 24/7 except for charging breaks. Their use has freed up more than 80 hours per week, at least during peak season, allowing staff to focus on other projects.
The mowers rely on a separate GPS system connected to an antenna at Patriot Pool — with a 40-mile range.
“Everything's done through the tablet,” Clements said. “Ninety-nine percent of any kind of issues that I have, I can diagnose from the tablet.”
Each Turf Tank unit cost $50,000, while the two mower robots were $10,000 and $13,000, the latter due to a larger battery. While the price may cause sticker shock, Clements says they were one-time purchases that have saved the city significant time and money over the years.
