Now that New Orleans is two weeks in the rear view mirror and the GCM staff is putting the final touches on our post-show March issue, I'm finally able to take a breath and reflect on all that I soaked in at the Golf Industry Show.
Robotic mowers are surrounded by hype everywhere they go, and Precise Path's booth on the trade show floor indeed bustled with attention from rapt attendees. The machine is pretty cool looking. The robotic technology that fuels the company's new RG3 mower was actually originally developed as part of a contest for the military to come up with robotic machinery. The designers decided it was a perfect fit for the golf market. Instead of using GPS technology, it uses a local positioning system. Each unit comes with four beacons that need to be set up in a rectangle around each green. The beacons communicate with the mower and give it data so it knows which green is which, information that's all programmable by the user. Included software lets superintendents control the direction of mow, whether to mow only or to mow and roll, whether to double-cut or clean-up, and more, and superintendents can also schedule mow times and settings for an indefinite length of time.
The big advantage touted by the kind folks I talked to at the Precise Path booth is labor. A crew member delivers the unit to the green, positions the four beacons and hits start. Then he or she could tend to the bunkers, fairways or myriad other tasks, maximizing productivity. And we all know how important increasing productivity and decreasing costs are in this industry right now; in essentially every industry right now.
The RG3 will be ready to ship by the fourth quarter of 2009. For more new products that were featured in New Orleans, check out Page 82 of your March issue of GCM, and continue to look for new products in our regular department, "Product news," found near the back of the book.
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