Meet Honda’s Miimo. It’s a cute little robot lawnmower, doing its duty and keeping your lawns clean… until you take off its shiny white exterior shell, and see the metal and plastic whirling dervish of destruction underneath.
Miimo is a new robot lawnmower from the guys at Honda, designed for the US market and sold alongside all of Honda’s other regular push-along and ride-on lawnmowers. It’s designed to do all your mowing without you interacting with it: a buried electric wire at the boundary of your property tells it where to mow up to, and a timer and sensors can tell it when your lawn needs a trim.
But the main thing that stood out to me was simultaneously how cool and how confronting the Miimo looks once you take off that white curved plastic shell: it’s hardcore. Look at those studded wheels and the three-bladed spinning wheel of follicular devastation. Actually, it really also shows how simple electric vehicles are: beyond the motor for the actual mowing spindle, and the motors for driving Miimo around, there’s really not much to see. Less than the carbs (or fuel injection) and fuel tanks and throttles of petrol-powered mowers, at least.
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Update: Honda MPE is currently testing out Miimo for the Aussie market — we’ll let you know when you can get your hands on one.