Regular lawnmowers are a perfectly fine way to mow your lawn, but they can be a bit boring. They’re also not always the best at tackling thick brush and bushes. [rctestflight] has a solution to both of those problems, in the form of a plant-munching bulldozer.
The concept is simple — it starts with a hefty miniature RC bulldozer. Weighing in at 27 kilograms (60 pounds), the beast has actual functioning hydraulics to control the blade and plow. It struggles somewhat with traction, particularly in muddier conditions, and can’t really dig much, but it nonetheless looks the business.
As cool as it was, [rctestflight] decided to employ it for some real yard work by outfitting it with a mowing rig. The ‘dozer was outfitted with a pair of sawblades, run by twin brushless motors for plenty of grunt. That gave the bulldozer the ability to mow through not just lawn, but even thick blackberry bushes and two-foot high weeds.
It’s not great at steering, but it’s able to destroy thick brush with reckless abandon. Fundamentally, it looks like a very fun way to mow an overgrown yard.
Oh, boy. Don’t let anyone in Granby, CO see this…
Marvin must’ve got his idea from this movie –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU73kzrhWig
You want to see something really horrifying, look up the cutters for a “CLAAS Forage Harvester”.
That being said, this build could use some of that “flight termination” equipment we keep hearing about… you know, in case it ever decides to disobey :P
Another hacker with a vendetta against blackberries?
Yes add blackberries to bindweed, bamboo and Japanese knot-weed and you have the Four Horsemen of the Gardening Apocalypse.
Unfortunately I am blessed with all 4.
Suffer from Pigweed and Hemlock constantly here in Texas: always pulling them.
This wouldn’t work for pigweed as the seeds stay viable for 30 years. And stick to you.
I’ve always thought that the principle difference between a flower and a weed was perspective.
I’m not even a gardener and my first response to this article was “Could we get a few thousand of these in Roomba mode?
Perspective won’t destroy your house’s foundation like Japanese knotweed can. Blackberries, although tasty, become an impenetrable cloud of razor wire. Bindweed can – somehow – climb up directly into the lower branches of a tree from the ground overnight, which is unnerving to say the least.
Nature is relentless and heartless – nuke them all from orbit . It’s the only way to be sure.
The trick is to figure out how to us the Japanese knotweed plant to produce a viable fuel, cancer treatment, building material, plastic, or male impotence cure. The plant will be on an endangered species list within a year.
Japanese knotweed is a source of resveratrol. Nonetheless, it’s an invasive nuisance and should be wiped out in most places.
A flower is a weed with a marketing budget.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weed+saw+blade+cutter&iax=images&ia=images
Nice toy and all but theses ^^ things do exist and it looked to me like they would’ve been a lot more efficient.
Hrm. I’m less excited than the other comments as I’ve seen several examples of how even those regular trimmers with the plastic string doing the cutting can severely hurt small animals like e. g. hedgehogs hiding in the bushes.
> Not great at steering.
> Exposed sawblades.
Are they going to do a follow up article here when someone loses a foot? Youtube is already bad enough at the algorithm. I wish HaD, when they did post YT videos, were posting undiscovered gems instead of influencers looking for clicks.