Robots will soon be mowing the lawn in Birmingham’s downtown Linn Park.

The Birmingham City Council on Tuesday approved a contract with My Goat Inc. for four Goats, or robotic mowers, that will mow the grassy areas in Linn Park.

The contract provides the electric-powered robotic mowers for a one-year period as a pilot program, costing up to $11,720.

“If it works well, we can look at expanding it,” said Joshua Yates, director of the City of Birmingham Department of Public Works.

The system has been used in the City of Tuscaloosa and on numerous golf courses, said City Council member Hunter Williams. “They’ve found it to be effective,” he said

“I definitely see the advantage of having an iRobot type of application, or a Roomba, kind of like vacuuming your house,” said Council member J.T. Moore.

Moore expressed concerns about the possibility of theft of the robotic mowers. “There’s some tech that’s just going to be out roaming around,” he said. “How do we keep this equipment and technology safe?”

Yates said the mowers have GPS tracking so that they can always be located, and that if they were stolen, they were useless to anyone else without the programming function. “Theft isn’t much of an issue,” he said. “If it’s taken it can’t be used in any other application.”

He said the city could program the mowers to run at any time of day or night. The mowers are set up in pens that enclose an area that will be mowed.

“This is exactly the kind of innovative thinking we need more of,” said Council member Darrell O’Quinn.

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