The Taiwanese company URSROBOT Inc. wanted to bring extreme precision to its brand Nexmow, a robotic lawn mowing company.

The company, founded four years ago, established the Nexmow brand to cater to professional landscape services, using Topnet Live and RTK corrections to achieve two centimeter-level mowing accuracy. Thomas Wu, URSROBOT’s vice president of research and development, said Nexmow robots can be deployed in fleets, are all electric, can be operated from smartphones and can be quickly moved from one location to another.

The Taipei-based company has a U.S. headquarters in San Jose and has been in the U.S. market for a year, with operations in California, Texas, Oregon and Illinois. It also has its eye on the East Coast, including Florida.

Using Topnet Live and 4G LTE allows the mowers to precisely navigate, enabling the company’s geofencing technology, combined with data from multiple sensors, to keep Nexmow robots inside boundaries while mowing in the most efficient way possible.

Wu said the company’s end user is the professional landscaper, working in areas such as parks, HOAs, museum grounds, universities and recreation centers. (The systems are available on a subscription basis).

“The customer loves our product because it’s easy to deploy and move from one domain to another domain very easily,” he said. 

The mowers bring a lot to the table: being electric, they’re quiet and don’t pollute—part of a green solution. One major concern Wu has heard, however, is for those landscape workers who fear the robot mowers will take their jobs. He spent time with landscapers in California and heard those fears. 

“After the deployment, working with the robotic solution for one month, they realize the robotic solution will not replace their job. Instead, the robotic solution will make their job better,” he said. 

The cutting quality usually improves and operators don’t have to worry as much about labor shortages, as one operator can oversee up to 10 robotic mowers in one zone.

Making these systems operate across Taiwan and the United States—the company’s two largest markets, for now—was a major reason to select Topcon’s Topnet Live as its positioning system, due to its global nature, Wu said.

“In terms of commercial service, we need to provide a reliable service, so the primary positioning solution is RTK,” Wu said.

Topcon provides nationwide support in the United States and their technical support is good, Wu said, and the companies are working together to expand global coverage. “Personally, I think selecting Topcon is a good choice, a right choice,” Wu said.

Wu pointed out that URSROBOT Inc. is a service robot company, not just a grass-cutting company. It is a strategic partner with wireless and mobile giant Qualcomm, and Wu himself comes from the smartphone and tablet industry.

“We are a service robot company and cutting grass is only our first application, and right now we are going to extend applications and find potential customers in other applications,” he said. “In the near future, for outdoor, we think there is still a lot of opportunity there.”

He mentioned several possibilities, including agriculture, last-mile delivery and surveillance.