Husqvarna, the world's largest producer of lawn mowers, chainsaws and portable gas-powered garden equipment, has launched a robotic lawn mower in the U.S. The Automower™ Solar Hybrid will keep up to an acre of lawn neatly trimmed without the owner having to do anything other than occasional maintenance. For no extra charge, you can even watch the little darling do its thing while you're parked in front of your TV, assuming you have an appropriately situated window. Having your own gardener would probably be more gratifying, but hey, it's a beginning.

The Automower™ is battery-powered, with onboard solar cells that enable the mower to extend its cutting periods before requiring a recharge. It is fully programmable—it will cut 24/7 if you want it to—and it is smart enough to know when to return to its base to be charged. It retails at $2,295 or $2,595, depending on whether you want the half-acre or full-acre version.

The machine conjures up images from Woody Allen's classic movie Sleeper, a futuristic comedy peopled (or, rather, robot-ed) with machines that serve canapés, mop the floor, and so on. The Automower's™ range of travel is determined by a wire that's laid down around the lawn's perimeter. The on-board navigation system monitors its position relative to the wire, keeping it in the area to be mowed. If there are sizable things sticking out of the lawn—like, say, a tree—the mower, announces a press release, "gently bumps into it, reverses, and starts off in another direction." This is very impressive, sort of: it makes the Automower™ about as smart as your average drunk.

Chris McManus is an authorized Automower™ dealer based in Mendham, NJ. You might think he'd be in the garden products business, but no, he's in the computer business. It makes sense for him to be selling the Automower™, he says, because "it's more a computer than a lawnmower." He's sold eight machines since the summer and has about a dozen orders in hand for next summer.

McManus is bullish on the Automower™, and I can see why. Why do more when you can do less?

This is how we couch potatoes think. Now if Husqvarna would just introduce the Autoblogger™.