There's been talk of iRobot creating such a grass munching bot since 2006 and the company has made no secret of the fact that it plans on creating, as iRobot CEO Colin Angle put it in a special column for PCMag.com: "more single-purpose robots taking care of dull, dirty, dangerous tasks that do not require significant manual dexterity."

We'd often speculated that the next bot would Clean windows, but no such plans have surfaced. These schematics, however, don't exactly point to the imminent release of a mulch-happy robot. There are so many options in here for controlling the robot's lawn navigation: GPS, RFID, guide wire, prayer (okay, we made that last one up), that iRobot appears to be trying to cover all bases for a virtual army of prototypes.

iRobot's apparent hesitancy to roll with a "Mowba" could be an indication that the Bedford, Massachusetts-based firm is still searching for its next big hit. The company had tremendous success with the Roomba floor vacuum and somewhat less success with each successive robot product: the Scooba robot floor mop, the garage-cleaning Dirt Dog and the recent Looj gutter cleaner. What's more, there are other robot lawn mowers out there, including the huge, heavy Friendly Robotics Robomow Lawnmower. None have taken the grass-cutting world by storm.

We rang up iRobot and got this official comment on this new automation: "IRobot does not comment on products that have not been publicly announced. We do explore many areas where robots can make a difference in people's lives, and while doing so we are careful to protect our intellectual property."

In other words, stay tuned...

Ed Note: The image you see is simply an artist rendering and in no way represents the actual, alleged product.