Industrial-strength lawnmower stars at NIWeek

Aug. 10, 2015
The ProSlab 155 automated turf cutter uses cutting-edge automation and sensing to improve productivity, save time and energy, and take lawn cutting to the next level.

A show such as NIWeek, which was held August 2-6 in Austin, Texas, is always a magnet for the coolest, biggest, baddest technology. What’s the point of having such a show after all, if it’s not to wow the visitors with the latest and greatest stuff? But a huge turf cutter/palletizer on the floor of the Austin Convention Center may be one of the more unusual exhibits at a show one tends to think of a being devoted to testing, measurement, embedded computing and LabViewn.

But the same kinds of tech that power production and packaging lines and robots are what drive the ProSlab 155, from Firefly Equipment, which one reviewer calls “a factory on wheels.” It cuts turf into neat squares and rectangles and automatically stacks them onto pallets, adjusts itself for various kinds of grasses, soil conditions and terrains.

Read more about it here.  And watch it in action here. (Scroll down the page to “The FireFly in action.”)

You'll never think about cutting the grass in quite the same way again.

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