The iMow is an automatic lawn mower made by Toro. While this mower had commercials running for a brief time in 2001, its only robotic competition, the Friendly Robotics Robomower, didn't. The Robomower did not truly amount to anything in terms of consumer usage. The iMow, being somewhat more difficult to use and carrying a hefty $500 price tag (not including the cost of the necessary peripherals), did not become popular with consumers. It's fairly difficult to find anymore, other than off of Toro's web site.
The iMow resembles a tiny red bathtub flipped over with wheels and a Toro logo emblazoned in white. Powering this landscaping marvel is a rechargeable battery which lasts for a couple hours, or about 5000 square feet of lawn. The iMow works by following the magnetic field given off by a perimeter wire (sold seperately) that needs to be installed on your lawn around any area you want cut before you can use your mower. After this area is cut, the mower fills in the rest of your lawn in a triangular fashion. The iMow can sense obstacles if it bumps into them, but even so, trees, shrubs, and sprinkler heads only complicate its job further. The mower is relatively weak, so slopes greater than around 15 degrees will shorten up the battery life, or even prevent the mower from going up the hill. Toro includes a manual controller in the iMow package, so you can mow over missed areas with relative ease.
With the high price tag and mower's lackluster performance, unless your lawn is about the size of the grass in the infield of a baseball diamond, and resembles it very closely, the iMow is not really for you.
Some info from the Toro web site