The Robot I Actually Want

I’m a computer nerd with a yard. There’s a fundamental conflict there.

If it were entirely up to me, I could happily live in the city. An urban environment. Things to walk to. No grass that I’m personally responsible for.

But I have three kids, and having somewhere for them to touch grass is pretty important. So we have a yard.

The lawn gets mowed every week because I pay somebody to do it. That part of the system works beautifully.

The weeds? Those are still assigned to me.

Which means I’ll ignore them for two or three weeks, then spend part of my Sunday pulling out things that would have been much easier to deal with when I first noticed them.

I know this. I understand the consequences. Apparently, I need to learn it again every few weeks.

And the whole time, I’m thinking: we need a robot for this.

I love robot mowers. Absolutely love them. But mowing isn’t even the part I hate most.

Give me a robot that gets into the beds, finds the weeds, and pulls them out by the roots. That’s the robot I actually want.

I help with my kids’ robotics group, so now I’m wondering whether I’ve been looking at this all wrong.

They’re thinking about building something that can compete in a championship.

I’m thinking about whether their engineering talents could rescue my Sunday.

“Great work, team. Now, how does it do with dandelions?”

Maybe that’s my next career focus. Weed-pulling robotics. A problem I understand deeply, with a very motivated first customer.

Me.

I love figuring out how technology can make work easier. Sometimes that work is complicated. Sometimes it’s me crouched in the yard, annoyed at a plant.

I can’t be the only one.

What’s the chore you really dislike but keep doing because somebody has to? And if you could hand it over to a robot tomorrow, would you?