I had the opportunity to attend Pepcom’s Spring Spectacular in NYC yesterday, an event for media where tech companies demo off their latest gadgets. While there were a lot of cool innovations on display, here are a few that stood out to me. 

Robot lawnmowers

If there’s one chore I hate doing the most, it’s mowing the lawn. Lymow offers a solution to this with its robot lawnmower. If you’ve never seen one in action, think of these like a Roomba for outside. 

Less advanced models rely on you placing boundary wires around your property, which the mower will use to bounce around until the lawn is mowed. Lymow’s model, however, does away with boundary wires by using a combination of RTK satellite navigation and cameras to understand your property boundaries and avoid objects like sprinklers or trees. 

It can handle 45° inclines and can traverse over obstacles up to two inches tall, allowing it to navigate over roots, holes, bumps, or muddy areas of the yard. It can also mow up to 1.73 acres per day. 

Lymow initially ran the mower as a Kickstarter last year, which was successfully funded, and is still accepting orders from late backers; the most basic option is $1999, which includes the mower, charging station, RTK station, and 528wh battery. 

In addition to Lymow, there were a few other companies showing off their robot mowers at the event, including Husqvarna and Yarbo, which actually also offers a robot snow blower and robot leaf blower as well. 

Image credit: Lymow

Instantly charged phone

Swippitt is a phone charging system that gives you access to a fully charged battery in about two seconds. The system consists of a special phone case with an external battery that wirelessly charges your phone and a charging hub that contains and charges five external batteries. When placing your phone in the hub, it swaps the current battery out for a fully charged one.

It’s essentially a fancier way to utilize wireless charging power packs, so you could technically replicate this idea by buying a couple of those and keeping them fully charged and swapping them on your phone as needed, but this adds a little bit extra convenience because you don’t have to keep track of which ones are charged, and the fact that the battery is in the phone’s case make it a bit more ideal for on-the-go use.  

Image Credit: Swippitt

A full gym experience in one piece of equipment

Speediance’s Gym Monster 2 is an all-in-one system for all of your at-home strength training needs. It can act as many pieces of equipment you’d see at a gym, like a squat rack, ski machine, cable machine, or rower, and can even be used to simulate a barbell or dumbbells.  

It supports 10 different workout modes, including strength, stretch, and cardio, and offers a library of over 300 workouts that utilize over 400 different exercises. It also features an AI coach that can come up with a personalized schedule that can dynamically change as your fitness progresses. 

Gym Monster 2 can go up to 220 lbs in weight and users can adjust in 1 lb increments, unlike traditional gym equipment where there is a bigger jump between weights. The weight system offers four modes: standard (consistent resistance), chain (variable resistance that feels like free weights), eccentric (greater load on the downward movement of an exercise), and fixed speed (controlled movement that enhances stability and endurance). 

Image Credit: Speediance

It includes some interesting safety features, such as the ability to detect muscle imbalances when doing movements with the barbell and an auto-rescue feature that reduces the weight when you can’t complete a lift.

A washing machine attachment to cut down on microplastic pollution

CLEANR is a filter that attaches to your washing machine and filters out up to 90% of microplastics. According to the company, you can easily install it yourself on any washing machine in about 15 minutes. 

The company also has an app you can install on your phone that shows stats on the estimated amount of microplastics it has captured, as well as alerts on when maintenance is required.

Image Credit: CLEANR