Interesting news today that Husqvarna are launching pilot schemes in Edinburgh and London to monitor the effectiveness of robotic mowing in public parks.

The company clearly believe this style of maintenance will play a significant role in the upkeep of our public green spaces of the future.

However, it would seem that specialist dealers may well have somewhat of an educational job on their hands, convincing professional buyers that they want to be purchasing these tools.

The task ahead may not be so much in trying to convince turf professionals that these machines can perform an effective job. Nor what my first reaction to the news would be if I cut grass for a living, that a robot is trying to steal my job!

More so the hurdle which may need to be addressed by dealers is persuading grounds care professionals that these robots will not be a massive target for thieves.

We ran this story of Husqvarna's robotic pilot scheme in Edinburgh and London in our sister publication TurfPro on Monday this week - and as that newsletter is targeted at grounds care professionals I was fully expecting to hear a bunch of comments along the lines of 'I don't want a robot taking away my work'. And to be fair, we did receive one like that ("Admirable technology, but does nobody ever consider the bigger picture of job reduction and stagnating wages".)

But surprisingly most of the comments received from the turf professionals were sceptical of the security of these units.

For example:

• "Great. It's the way to go. How do you stop someone stealing it?"
• "How long before it is stolen? Great idea though."
• "Health and safety implications, unmanned cutting equipment, vandalism, theft, problems! Like the idea though."
• "And when they have stolen the mower, how long before they destroy the perimeter, digging the cable out for the copper?"

I found it interesting and unexpected that this was the first reaction from a section of TurfPro's specialist readership. Educating these users why theft hopefully shouldn't be too much of an issue due to all the advanced security features of modern robotic mowers, will now fall on the shoulders of dealers.

The fact that the units are rendered useless once away from their base station and perimeter wire, and that top end ones feature GPS communication abilities which can alert owners to their whereabouts via SMS messages, need to be imparted to buyers. These buyers then in turn might want to consider publicising this information locally if they are going put the robot to work in an unmanned public space. If the info is out there in the public consciousness that nothing of any value can be achieved from a robot alone, one would like to hope that maybe criminals wouldn’t bother with the effort of stealing one?

It seems clear from the direction which companies such as Husqvarna are heading that they see automisation very much increasing in commercial grass cutting applications. I attended the company's Silent City conference in Stockholm last year where the future of urban parks maintenance was discussed in some depth - with robotic mowing talked of as a significant element of future grounds care.

They have another Silent City event coming up in October, this time held in Edinburgh. Perhaps by then they might have some initial data from these trials both here in the UK and in Sweden which could hopefully allay some fears.

It would be great if dealers had some hard, factual evidence they could show potential professional customers as to why these units won’t go missing as soon as they are put out to work.