It was my privilege last week to attend Husqvarna's second Silent City conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

Presenting to representatives of local authorities and landscape contracting companies from around the world, Husqvarna were revealing their plans for future maintenance of parks and open spaces. The company have ambitious plans for utilising modern and developing technology for the upkeep of the public spaces of the future.

The company used the event to launch a global report on what the urban park of 2030 will look like. Entitled 'Future Urban Parks Report' the survey which they commissioned is based on the responses of landscaping architecture students in 15 countries and theorises on the growth of green spaces in our urban centres. The report offers thoughts on how these new parks of the future will look, their importance in the public's lives, and how they will be maintained by the support of sensors, robotics, drones and citizens.

Husqvarna asked these students, representing 60 different universities, that given urbanisation, sustainability and the rapid development of technology, what will the future urban park look like, what functions will it perform and how will it be looked after? They are using the responses gathered to influence the development of their future grounds maintenance products - and inevitably this will mean greater usage of robotic mowers in commercial applications.

Pavel Hajman, President of the Husqvarna Division, told the assembled guests, "In our quest to explore new opportunities to drive this industry forward, I am excited to announce that Husqvarna will conduct an urban robotic park pilot in Stockholm to put the findings of the report to the test, learning more about the possibility to increase sustainability and productivity in professional landscaping in urban areas."

The company went on to announce that it won’t just be Stockholm where robot mowers in commercial applications will be tested. They put out a call to the assembled representatives of local authorities from around the world to help them try out robotic mowing in their cities. One major UK city took them up on the offer.

It's significant that the company is wanting to not just encourage robotic mowing commercially in Sweden, where every third mower sold is a robot, but in territories where it hasn't taken off in such a big way yet too. Andreas Kallming, Product Manager for Robotic Mowers confirmed its the company's intention to see this branch of the company increase worldwide, saying "It's time to go commercial with robotic mowing."

Husqvarna believe that the use of robots in commercial mowing offers cost, environmental, health and safety and cutting quality benefits. A robot could be deployed on a busy roundabout for example, where it's difficult and dangerous for an operative to drive a ride-on across several lanes of busy traffic. The robot, and other ones dotted around strategic areas within a locality, can all be controlled and performance analysed remotely via Husqvarna's Fleet Service application.

Delegates discussed how theft may be an issue for mowers left alone in public spaces, but it was hoped with some advanced publicity that the machines would be rendered useless when away from their base station and perimeter wire, this may be discouraged. Mindless vandalism appears to be more of a potential problem perhaps?

As well as cutting the grass these robots will be performing another function, equipped with sensors, they will be collecting data on air quality, light, sound and rain water. The data will be analysed by the non-profit organisation Quantified Planet, to support research for sustainability.

What does this mean for the human turf professional though? Should increased robotics be a cause for concern? Will robots be taking jobs across the industry? Will our industry reach a situation like in some retail environments, where the solitary human employee is only on hand to monitor the banks of robots for when they go wrong?

To be fair, I doubt it.

Husqvarna were certainly only talking about robots as another tool in the groundsman's arsenal which could be utilised where they would be actually helpful. They are putting equal amounts of dedication into new products, which whilst technologically advanced, are designed to 100% be in the hands of skilled professionals. The very nature of the job dictates that human interacton with machiney and the environment will always be required.

There's no need to go all Sarah Connor just yet.