Electric Sheep’s Dexter robots now available

SAN FRANCISCO — Electric Sheep Robotics announced the formal general availability of its Dexter robot. Dexter takes existing commercial lawn mowers, both gas and electric, and turns them into autonomous vehicles. Dexter is designed to address critical labor shortages in the landscaping, facilities and property management industries.

Nationally, a record 4.5 million U.S. workers quit their jobs in November. There are more job openings than there are workers. The labor market in landscaping is particularly dire. Tens of thousands of full-time positions are going unfilled, according to the National Association of Landscape Professionals, who also call 2021 “the worst labor market in recent history.”

The company also today announced Series A financing in the amount of $21.5 million, led by Tiger Global. To date, the company has raised $25.7 million and is currently the best-capitalized autonomous mowing start-up with the largest number of commercial customer deployments.

Other investors include Foundation Capital, who led the $4 million Seed round, grep -vc, Signia Venture Partners, as well as individual pre-Seed investors Ariel Cohen (TripActions), Travis Deyle (Cobalt Robotics), Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad), and Reinforced Ventures.

Electric Sheep will use the funds to fuel expansion across all departments in order to meet growing customer demand. The company currently has contracts with 30 customers across the U.S. and interest is high.

Dexter attaches to new or existing lawn mowers and requires minimal training in order to autonomously mow any type of grass. Landscapers show Dexter what to do one time, and the robot then autonomously repeats those actions. Dexter utilizes cutting-edge technology, including LiDAR, cameras, GPS, ultrasonic sensors for precise maneuvering across diverse terrain and OTA firmware updates. All robots are monitored while in use and incorporate a safety-rated system capable of detecting perimeter breaches in even the most adverse conditions. Dexter is being designed to the evolving R15.08 standard for self-driving robots and is available with no upfront costs through a Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) model.

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