DEVON COUNCIL UNDERTAKE ROBOTIC TRIAL

East Devon District Council have partnered with local dealer Devon Garden Machinery to have Ambrogio robot mowers installed into a key site to autonomously maintain pitches, freeing up their team to do other skilled tasks.

Forming part of a larger trial, the site which totals over 25,000m2, has several football pitches and a clubhouse area. The flagship Ambrogio L400 Deluxe (20,000m2 capacity) will be mowing the pitches, while a smaller Ambrogio L350i Elite (7000m2) will maintain around the clubhouse.

Devon Garden Machinery supplied and installed the robots with the support of Magic Distribution, suppliers of Ambrogio in the UK. Installed with the Honda powered Ambrogio NT60 wire laying machine, the full installation of over 6 acres was completed within a day.

Steve Dommett of Devon Garden Machinery, said, “It’s been a pleasure to work with East Devon District Council to provide a mowing solution that matches their aims for groundscare moving forward. We’re really excited for them to see the turf quality once both these robots have had a chance to settle in and transform the area.

"Robotic lawnmowers are a significant part of our long term plan. With Ambrogio we have a full range which allows us to provide a quality product for any customer, ranging from small intricate lawns, through to tens of thousands of square meters with commercial models.

"To be able to install two robots into this size area so quickly makes this a really feasible project and something we look forward to doing more of.”

Utilising their multichannel setup, the two Ambrogio models can be installed directly next to each other leaving no uncut area between the two installations. Depending on the application, Ambrogio robot mowers can also be set up to work within one installation, sharing their GPS data with each other to cleverly work around each other and increase the total area that can be covered.

John Golding, East Devon’s Strategic Lead - Housing, Health & Environment, said, “As part of our Transformation Strategy we are always striving to continuously improve what we do for the benefit of East Devon residents and visitors and this long term robotic mower trial is an exciting and interesting example of this.

"We are carefully assessing cutting edge technology to maintain our green spaces, to analyse the potential for this technology to reduce maintenance costs and improve quality. This will free up our permanent staff to work on more highly skilled tasks in our parks and gardens, as well as reducing our carbon footprint, as the machines produce up to 90% less CO2 emissions than standard petrol mowers and are much quieter.”