You can use iRobot's Home app to schedule lawn cutting, fine-tune the grass height and specify areas that are off-limits. It shouldn't shred your petunias, then. The bot itself is built to survive the rain and can handle the not-so-forgiving terrain in your yard.

Don't expect to buy a Terra all that soon. iRobot is only promising to sell the mower sometime in 2019, and the company has only committed to launches in both Germany and (in beta form) the US. This is more of a tentative step into an unfamiliar category than a full-on leap. With that said, this might help take robotic mowers into the mainstream. It eliminates some of the complexity of robot mowers and comes from what's arguably the best-known name in household robotics. There's no guarantee it'll succeed, especially when pricing remains an unknown, but it stands a better chance than most.