The Beginning

Welcome to the Heibjerg blog. Here there will be posts about the company, product, and related topics such as gardening and tech.

How it started

To weed, or to automate, that is the question. Or a question at least. When I first got my robot lawnmower I was thrilled. Previously when I had time to go in the garden mowing would take up 90% of my time. The good thing about moving grass is that the progress is quite visible. But the work itself was tedious. So when my robotic lawnmower automated this task I finally got around to some of the other tasks in the garden.

I have a large gravel driveway. A ton of weeds find it way onto it every year. I am personally not a believer in poison as a means of weed control. So I usually use a weed burner. This is a boring and mundane task. And then one day it hit me, this should be automated.

Fire Fire!

So the first impulse was: "let's strap the weed burner onto a mower, and call it a day". I stopped myself before I completed this preto-type. I would never trust a robot with a flamethrower to work unsupervised. It could start a fire, and being a robot not stop itself or the fire. And I do not think my insurance covers attacks by robots. If I had to supervise it there would be really no point. I abandoned the idea until a friend of mine told me that they used boiling water for weed control on their patio. Eureka, this eliminates the risk of fires. I am not saying that boiling water is harmless, but it is magnitudes safer than a weed burner.

The Goal

The goal of Heibjerg is to automate tedious tasks in the garden. There are many places in the garden where weeds are a problem. In time we hope to cover them all. For now, the Heibjerg robot is focusing on covering gravel or stone-paved areas such as driveways or patios. Why? They are fairly simple compared to other complex garden structures. Keeping these areas weed-free is a tedious and mundane task. Perfect for a robot!