If one purpose of a robot is to remove the burden of dangerous, difficult, time-consuming, or tedious tasks from humans, then the robotics industry has been failing a large part of the consumer market.

No one has yet come up with a reliable, inexpensive device willing to do the dishes or the laundry. However, the availability of robotic lawn-mowing equipment continues to increase, with steady improvements in technology and price. Despite advances, however, the labor-saving technology homeowners still turn to most often is a relatively old-fashioned solution: a spottily reliable teenage boy. But Robotics Business Review expects that to change over the next decade, as robotic lawn mowers better address navigation and obstacle-avoidance issues, as well as safety concerns.

Many people enjoy tending their own lawns, and take pride in the results. Of the 115 million households in the United States, 70 percent did some work in the yard or garden themselves during 2009, rather than hiring a landscape service or skipping it all together, according to a widely respected annual survey released by the National Gardening Association.

That 70 percent—61 million households—spent an average of $444 on lawn and garden care during 2008, for a total of $36 billion. Three-quarters of them planned to spend the same or more during 2009, according to the report, which was released in July 2009 and focused on spending the previous year.

In addition, of the $8.5 billion Americans spent on power lawn and garden equipment in the United States, 62 percent went for equipment designed to cut the household lawn, according to industrial research firm the Freedonia Group. Thirty-seven percent of that—$3.15 billion—was spent on new lawn mowers. The rest was spent on turf and grounds-maintenance equipment, trimmers, edgers, replacement parts, and the like.

Compare that to the $5 billion ABIResearch predicts Americans will spend on robotic products by 2015 and you have an enormous overlap—one that could very well make the robotic lawn mower the Roomba of the next decade and free millions of reluctant gardeners from the least compelling portion of their landscaping routines.

While robotic lawn mowers are not nearly as common or as widely accepted today as iRobot’s Roomba vacuum cleaner, they have the potential for equal growth. Launched in 2002 to great fanfare and poor initial sales, the Roomba eventually convinced consumers it could operate as promised—though iRobot’s engineers had to overcome spotty performance problems with its guidance system, dirt container, and battery life. In January, iRobot announced that total sales of the Roomba vacuum-bots had passed 5 million units.