No one could have seen this coming.

From Gizmodo.

"LawnBott, the $2,750 robot which announced itself as your loyal automated lawn mower—capable of cutting 33,000 square feet of grass in a single charge—has revealed its true face: it wants to cut humans to pieces. Actually, just stupid humans, but the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Kyodo America have decided to "recall them immediately."

Apparently, one of the owners lifted the mower from the ground while it was still on and "suffered minor lacerations from the moving blade."

It is amazing it took this long for someone to get injured from one of the Kyoto America Lawnbots. I blogged about this machine way back in Oct. 06. Here.

Where I said " As you can see, it also has a fairly obvious safety vulnerability. More concerning is an image on this site which shows you how far off the ground this machine gets when it is doing steep terrain."

I hope this doesn't halt the progression of robotic lawnmowers. After four years our Friendly Robotics machine "Mow" as we like to call him - is starting to show signs of robotic stress and age. We were thinking we were going to need to replace him soon. It sucks to have so few options. Especially since Friendly Robotics has struggled since it's inception. Mow has been more reliable than any of the iRobot machines I've owned have been. I hope some company comes in to fill the void.