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The small, tight-knit community of Pleasant Hill is upgrading its parks and the way it paints its sports fields.
A robot from the company, TinyMobileRobots, can paint the markings of a baseball field in minutes under the blazing July sun.
Waylon is one of Pleasant Hill's newest employees.
Waldo is operated by Landon Vest, a Parks and Facilities maintenance worker.
"You just set it and let it go do its thing," Vest said. "Before, you're dedicated to doing all the work yourself."
Human workers have to string rope to mark the lines, then carefully go over it by hand with spray paint. It takes Vest and his team nearly three hours to paint Yuille Field.
It took Waylon 11 minutes.
"I can do all of our baseball fields in less than half a day now and still go do something else the rest of the day," Vest said. "It makes a big difference and a big help."
TinyMobileRobots uses GPS and Bluetooth to map out the fields. It's programmed for precision and no curveballs when it comes to straight lines.
"[The robot] is just so much straighter and faster," TinyMobileRobots Territory Manager Brett Mathews said. "It really enhances the experience for the players as well because the fields are more accurate."
With Pleasant Hill's $11.5 million park expansion project well underway, Parks and Facilities Director Jeff Hull explained the robot is a home run for his five-person team.
"It's about $100 per application, per field, that's what it normally costs us," Hull said. "We're getting it done in minutes."
Vest has noticed a drastic difference in his productivity in completing a seemingly never-ending to-do list for park maintenance.
"It's allowed us to be way more productive and have way more time on our hands to do other things," Vest said. "There's never a lack of things to do."
Waylon cost Pleasant Hill about $40,000 plus yearly fees. Hull explained there isn't enough money in the city budget to cover all the work that needs to be done for summer sports.
"It's fractions of the overall cost that we would put for personnel to do the same work," Hull said. "We're not trying to take away jobs by any means, but at the same time, it enhances the jobs of the guys that we have here on staff. With public money, we don't have a whole lot of flexibility or additional funding to be able to use."
Waylon has been hard at work in Pleasant Hill for about two months. With the time and money the robot is expected to save over the next few years, Pleasant Hill plans to add more youth sports programming.
"Robots aren't taking people's jobs, they're enhancing the jobs," Mathews said.
TinyMobileRobots is currently operating in Lawrence and Shawnee, Kansas, and works with the KC Current.
