In an era where people can order everything from books to groceries from their mobile phones and have their items delivered to them in a matter of days — or hours, in some cases — the process of mowing and trimming lawns seems downright archaic.

Homeowners are still required to use the same gas-guzzling mowers their parents and grandparents used to use to care for their lawns, or must pay the neighbor boy to do it for them — assuming, of course, their hired hand does not feel like spending his Saturday afternoon playing Xbox instead.

A former Chieftain is looking to change the way Americans think about how they handle lawn care — and he has a fleet of robots to help him do so.

Dowagiac native Justin Crandall and the company he co-founded, Texas-based startup Robin, have been capturing the headlines over the last several months following the launch of its robotic lawn care service this past spring. The company rents out small automated lawn mowing devices, which are programmed to care for customers’ yards on a routine basis.

“Robots are the way of the future,” Crandall said. “Uber wants to be the first company to offer self-driving cars for transportation. Amazon wants to be the first company to deliver you items via drones. We want to be the first company to mow your lawns using robots.”

While Robin is currently only providing the devices to homeowners living in the Dallas area, Crandall’s and his business partner’s, Bart Lomont, venture has been turning heads across the country.

Last September, Crandall showed off one of their robot mowers at the popular TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. He was also recently interviewed for a segment about robotics for “CBS This Morning” news program, and a story about his company was recently featured on the front page of the popular conservative news aggregation website The Drudge Report.

For Crandall, this new journey is just him chasing his dreams, like he was encouraged to do by his parents, Jody and former Dowagiac Union Schools Superintendent Larry Crandall.

Crandall graduated from Dowagiac Union High School in 1994, and received a bachelor’s degree in finance from Hillsdale College in 1998. After spending several years working in the financial industry, he decided to study business administration at Harvard University, where he graduated in 2005 with a master’s degree.

That same year, he moved to Texas. Having caught the “entrepreneurial bug” while in grad school, Crandall began working for Bazaarvoice, a startup company that created software for companies to use for moderated online product reviews. The Dowagiac native had several positions with the company, including launching its European headquarters in London, before the company went public in 2012.

“It was pretty a fun ride, watching the company go from about 25 employees to a team of 700 people,” Crandall said.

The experience gave him the itch to launch his own startup, which led him to found Robin with Lomont in 2015.

The company was created to modernize the professional landscaping business by providing an easy way for customers to connect with contractors and receive quotes, schedule and reschedule appointments online and to pay bills automatically, without the headaches of traditional methods, Crandall said.

“[Landscaping] is a billion-dollar market that still operates the same way it did 30 years ago,” Crandall said. “It often takes you three phone calls to get someone to call you back, who then comes out not even to do the work, but to look over your lawn and give you an estimate. It’s not a 21st Century business.”

While the company was largely successful in its mission, one thing Robin’s services could not eliminate were the problems associated with traditional lawn mowing services. For most landscaping companies, mowing is not a massive money maker, yet the service is the most difficult to provide staffing for, and the one homeowners demand most.

However, by enlisting the help of robot mowers, the company is able to meet both the needs of customers as well as give landscapers more time to concentrate on other services, Crandall said.

The machines are programmed to automatically mow lawns where they are stationed. They are dispatched to mow for around 45 minutes or so before returning their docking station to recharge — no work or supervision required by the homeowner.

“It’s like [the movie] ‘Groundhog’s Day,’” Crandall said. “Every single day, the lawn looks exactly the same. It’s like we invented grass that doesn’t grow.”

While robot mowers are already a craze in Europe, the high price tag typically associated with the mowers — ranging from $1,500 to $2,000 — has made them less successful in the U.S. However, by renting the mowers out to customers, Robin not only makes the technology accessible but they also handle all the programming and maintenance work, which allows homeowners to continue about their days without ever having to worry about lawn care.

On top of the convenience, robot mowers are much quieter than their traditional counterparts, and can operate at any time of the day, rain or shine. Being powered through electricity, they are also much more environmentally friendly, as traditional lawnmowers emit as much pollution in one hour as 11 cars, Crandall said.

While the company’s robotics division is very much in its infancy, Crandall and the rest of the Robin team are so committed to their vision that they sold off their traditional mowing business earlier this summer. The company plans on expanding into the Austin, Texas, market in the future, and is currently developing ideas on how to launch the program into communities across the nation.

While he and his company may be thinking big, Crandall credits a lot of his success to the foundation he received during his formative years growing up in small town America, he said.

“My teachers always taught me to be curious, and to pursue my dreams,” Crandall said. “I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.”