Automated Lawn Maintenance: An Agronomic and Operational Review of Turf Health, Biodiversity, and Field Performance

Grass mowing is one of the most resource-consuming activities in green maintenance, whether in private areas such as home gardens or in public spaces like urban parks. In recent years, concerns related to climate change, human health, and sustainability have become increasingly prominent in green maintenance, leading manufacturers and industry professionals to explore and promote alternatives to traditional management methods. Battery-powered machines have gained popularity, significantly contributing to the reduction of fuel consumption and localized emissions. Initially, challenges related to energy autonomy and the limited power output of electric drivetrains were prevalent; however, many of these issues have been successfully addressed in recent years. Simultaneously, significant advances in operational autonomy have been made in lawn mowing with the development of robotic lawnmowers (RLMs). These devices have been maintaining gardens worldwide for over 15 years, achieving high levels of reliability and positioning themselves as strong competitors to conventional gasoline-powered lawnmowers. This review provides a critical synthesis of the current state of RLMs, considering them as field-deployed robotic systems operating within complex biological and agro-ecological environments, detailing the interplay between core robotic systems and operational and environmental performance, covering sensor technology, navigation systems, biodiversity impact, sustainability, and energy consumption. The work identifies systemic gaps in the literature regarding consistent comparison metrics and proposes a structured, multi-dimensional evaluation framework designed to standardize the benchmarking of RLM hardware and algorithms for future research.