I totally agree! Mower safety was also one of my worries once. It can be deadly even without software controlling it. A few days back in Poland a mower threw a piece of wire straight into a boy's heart (the kid is all right now). That being said, there is no way for the operator to constantly monitor what is happening around the mower. A set of sensors and software can be better at it. We can install cameras and LIDARs all around the mower and take care of safety better than humans do. There are challenges though: 1. You need to design the system in a way it fails safe. There is no explicit norm on how to do that yet. We can adapt existing norms from machine and robot safety for that purpose, but we risk missing something. 2. All the specification efforts right now are going in the direction of humans supervising software. The RC-controlled/autonomous mower is supposed to be always watched by someone. Firstly, humans suck at supervising stuff, it is a very boring and frustrating task, during which it is easy to get tired and lose focus. Secondly, people will quickly find a better task to do in the meanwhile: trim the hedge, do the detailing, do some weeding, while the mower is doing fine :) 3. Safe vision systems are expensive. It is hard to support a 360 deg. field of view for both cameras and LIDARs at a competitive cost. There is a huge temptation to reduce the BOM cost to compete with human labor. Now it is time for a shameless plug: personally, I am involved in making an autonomy kit for z-turn mowers. It is not an easy task.