Trend? Fad? Or TBD?

Robots have been part of the American psyche for three-quarters of a century as a science-fiction staple.

In recent years, they are becoming more a part of our daily lives. Even more recently, they are making an imprint in the turf industry, as superintendents and crews are integrating autonomous mowers into their operations. The technology allows superintendents to utilize team members who might spend their workdays mowing in other areas. It also allows mowing in time windows that minimize intrusions on play. Are autonomous mowers an emerging trend in the industry? Or a passing fancy?

The why behind integration

Dan Meersman is the chief planning officer and director of grounds and facilities at Philadelphia Cricket Club just outside Philadelphia. He’s responsible for around 420 acres of turf, including 45 golf holes at three separate locations as well as an athletic field.

Meersman received his first look at a prototype for a robotic mower in 2019 and was immediately intrigued by how little noise it generated. “The first thing that enamored me was the potential for noise reduction on the golf course,” he says.

Meersman, who has been at Philadelphia Cricket Club since 2009, compares the golf-course setting to that of a national park.

“If you have perfection in a landscape, it would probably be our national parks,” he says. “On a golf course, you’re trying to come as close to that as you can with natural beauty, a natural environment and no artificial noise. Clearly, the landscape is a little artificial. A golf course architect has to do some work to get it to function as a golf course, but from a noise perspective, you’re trying to reduce that. When I first saw the robotic mowers, that was the first thing that really hit home with me.”

Michael Campbell is the director of golf course operations at 36-hole Montclair Golf Club in Montclair, New Jersey, just 20 miles northwest of New York City. Campbell’s curiosity about autonomous technology has been piqued in recent years — in particular, after he attended a presentation on the subject at a trade show.

“I’ve been reading a lot about it,” Campbell says. “It seemed like Europe was kind of jumping into the robo scene a little bit more than us. We’ve been talking about it at Montclair for at least a couple of seasons, but I would say conversations and reading about it has been for the last couple years. Until quite recently, most of the stuff you read about was out of Europe.”

Campbell’s interest in autonomous mowers was heightened following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re a big club,” he points out. “We have 75 acres of fairways, we have 13 acres of greens, 100 acres of rough. It takes a lot of manpower to cut. We have a lot of grass under a half-inch. We have a lot of rough. So, it’s a pretty laborious property. I really started looking at it in earnest the year after COVID. We were hit with a really bad staffing issue, and it was really hard finding people.”

When Heather Schapals assumed the superintendent’s post at Seascape Golf Course, a daily-fee club in Aptos, California, about 80 miles south of San Francisco, in April of 2023, she encountered a unique situation. The course included some sloped areas covered in thick brush. Theoretically, the areas are out of play. In reality, they attract an abundance of golf balls.

The task of clearing out the brush areas was logistically challenging, requiring the efforts of several members of her seven-person crew using string trimmers or a mower that wasn’t designed for the task. Schapals had familiarity with autonomous mowers and observed one up close when she was employed at a 9-hole club in Seattle.

“I thought (the sloped areas at Seascape) could be a real good place for it,” she says. “It was real tight and we definitely needed the help with being able to keep things mowed.”

Schapals set out to find a mower that could handle the job.

“RC Mowers came out and did a demo of both sides of the slope mower that they have,” she says. “What really interested me is when they brought it for the demo, they left their rough-cut blades on it, and we went through some pretty thick brush and some blackberries. You can cut them down by hand, but it’s a pretty brutal job to go out there, crawl into a thicket of blackberries and cut them all out by hand. That won me over as well as the capabilities on the hill.”

The mower that Schapals eventually purchased, the R-52, requires a remote control. But she cites its ease of operation.

“It is really intuitive for younger people to use especially, because it’s like a big video game controller,” she says. “It’s got a little joystick and a few buttons. It’s got a camera that’s mounted on it in the front so that you can see without having to be right there. So, if you get stuck on something, you can see what it is. If there’s a stump in front of you, the camera will help you see what’s going on with the machine as you’re standing at a distance where it’s safe.”

What they’ve learned

At the start of the 2023 season, Campbell introduced the autonomous Husqvarna Automower 550 EPOS on Montclair’s short-game area, including its rough and fairway. The mowers typically operate from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“I have them set up to mow all day long, because I want the members to see them,” he says. “We can easily set up to where the mowers are never seen by the members and still have everything cut, but I chose to have them out and mowing the short-game area while the members are out and utilizing either the short game-area or the golf course so they can see them. Because not only do I have to get comfortable with it, I think there’s a level of comfort that has to be gained with the members.”

Campbell hopes this initial step will give him a sense of what the mowers are capable — and not capable — of doing.

“We’re just figuring out what the limitations are,” he says. “We really don’t know what those are yet. It’s just our first step. It was a relatively low investment and I think as we’re getting comfortable, the technology will continue to improve and help us stay above the curve. Right now, what I’m hoping is that this all goes well on the short-game area.”

Two years after seeing a prototype, Meersman was ready to integrate the Automower 550 into his operation.

“We finally decided we were going to try one of these on an activity field in our pool complex,” he says. “We had so much lawn furniture around the pool. I moved it to the club-owned home that I live in, so I got to start to see this thing on a daily basis.”

Meersman was again impressed by the mower’s lack of noise.

“There might be a couple deer back there and they weren’t bothered by this autonomous mower,” he says. “I said, ‘If a deer isn’t bothered by this and isn’t spoofed by it, surely a golfer isn’t really going to care.’”

The technology allowed Meersman to mow the club’s athletic field at any time, day or night. “And I was thinking how good that could be if I could take that to the golf course,” he says.

In the fall of 2022 Meersman did just that. He now uses around 30 autonomous mowers in the rough areas at Philadelphia Cricket Club’s three courses: two 18-hole layouts plus the nine holes at club’s original site. When determining where to deploy the mowers, Meersman took a practical approach, beginning in areas with easily accessible sources of power.

“We started out near each of our clubhouses, started near our maintenance facility,” he says. “Also, the club had acquired a home in the last year or two, so we had power at that home as well. That allowed us to reach a part of the golf course we wouldn’t otherwise be able to. The combination of three different clubhouses, a centrally located grounds facility and a property located on the perimeter that we owned meant we were able to reach a lot of our golf course acreage.”

In addition to the golf courses, the club utilizes an autonomous unit to paint the lines on its signature grass tennis courts at its original site. The presence of autonomous machines allows the Philadelphia Cricket Club team to devote more of its working hours to other matters.

“We have reallocated them to the in-play areas of the golf course the members care about most,” Meersman says. “We will spend more time plugging out divots. It will give us a chance to re-roll or re-mow greens every now and again, a little more than we used to. The bottom line is we take that labor and make the greens, tees and fairways all the better.”

Looking ahead

What does the future hold for autonomous and remote-control technology in turf? Numerous possibilities exist.

Campbell will continue experimenting with the autonomous mowers at Montclair.

“My hope is everything goes well with the short-game area,” he says. “Once I get comfortable and the members get comfortable and work out any kink that we may find, I’d like to take one of the nines and take the big rough mowers off them and buy a little fleet of (autonomous mowers) and just have the rough being mowed, and then gradually go from mowing rough into short-grass areas.”

Campbell enjoys seeing members’ reactions to the robotic mowers. “They work very well (the solar panels),” he says. “They run in the daytime hours so we can watch them run and so the members can see them. The members get a kick out of it.”

Schapals is similarly optimistic about the mowing future at Seascape.

“I hope to keep going on this track; I’m really excited about it,” she says. “I’m not sure how it’s going to go with things like crossing a road on their own or being out there completely on their own on the golf course, even if they have to have a babysitter.

“I think of how nice it would be to have one person out there with a mower, and a cup cutter, and a rake, and say, ‘You’re taking care of the green areas today,’ and they set their mower up and it does what needs to be done while they cut the cup and rake the bunkers.”

Schapals also envisions autonomous mowers designed for specific jobs or terrain.

“Smaller units for green surrounds,” she says. “I feel like that’s probably the next area we would need a little help with. I don’t have a small (unit) right now. I’m mowing everything with one large rough unit. Also, if there is something out there that could both do some of the slopes and the rough cut, I think our driving range would be a perfect candidate.”

Meersman has no doubt the industry will expand its use of autonomous mowers. He sees the trend leading to a safer work environment, especially compared to today’s methods of mowing slopes.

“If you think about steep slopes, you’re going to use a larger unit, typically a more traditional unit,” he says. “You’re probably going to get tire damage and mower damage, or you’re probably going to put a human on that with a push mower or a string trimmer. Now you’ve put an employee on a slope with a cutting blade or something that can injure them, so I think there’s a vast improvement in safety coming when some of these lightweight robots can get on super slopes. So, I’m excited about that.”

Meersman adds that autonomous technology will lead to new industry standards and member expectations.

“There will be a new standard where members will have an expectation on what the height of cut is and it will just stay at that height all the time. There’s really not fluctuation in height of cut anymore once you set your desired height of cut. What I’ve found is that once members have that standard, they don’t want to go backwards from it. When the members experience that at another club, they’re going to want it their own club.”

Rick Woelfel is a Philadelphia-based writer and senior Golf Course Industry contributor.