Unmanned, autonomous lawnmowers might soon be on MN highway sidelines

Unmanned lawnmowers could one day take over the job of clearing grass from the sides and medians of Minnesota highways.

Auto lawnmowers in Minnesota

What we know:

A bipartisan bill before lawmakers would help the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) study whether autonomous mowers will work.

A trip to the Capitol from Faribault inspired one Senator to figure out how to keep mowing crews off highways and possibly save some money down the road.

"I came up behind traffic, sometimes backed up ten miles," said Sen. John Jasinski, (R-Faribault). "And by the time you were wondering, what do you think, it's an accident. It's not an accident, just them mowing the ditches."

Pilot program funding

Dig deeper:

Since his slow commute, Sen. Jasinski reached across party lines for a possible fix.

A bill also backed by Sen. Scott Dibble, (DFL-Minneapolis) would give MnDOT $150,000 for a pilot project to determine if the machines could help.

The state agency already has a very accurate GPS system that helped Dunwoody College students direct their autonomous snowplows last weekend.

"Some of these plows have been accurate to within one centimeter," said Dunwoody Dean E.J. Daigle.

He has also dabbled in mowers, and he says the technology still has trouble with obstacles like bridges, side streets, and railroad crossings – and the machines can’t just get themselves to a grassy ditch along a highway.

But going autonomous could drastically shrink the motorcade of mowers Sen. Jasinski saw.

"It's possible that instead of one person on one mower mowing, you could have one person in charge of a whole fleet of mowers covering a five-mile stretch of the interstate," Daigle said.

He believes a government project could also improve the technology for smaller, personal mowers, driving down prices for consumers.

Sen. Jasinski says the only negative feedback he’s heard is from the union for MNDoT workers, concerned about technology taking jobs.

"I think sometimes people are scared of technology, whether it's that it's going to cost jobs or that it's going to go kind of go rogue and run people over or something like that," Daigle said. "I think it couldn't be further from the truth."

If it passed, MnDOT officials say they will initially look for calm location to test them out before potentially expanding to busier roads.

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