Tech shows are also a lot of incongruity. Like when you play a game of deathmatch on Doom on… a Husqvarna robot lawn mower.
The game revolves around anything and everything. It’s even a popular challenge among developers to port ID Software’s game to unorthodox video game devices. If you want an overview, read this article from Numerama which lists the devices to play on Doom. Nothing better than a show like MWC 2024 to discover this kind of demo. In this case, it was the robot mower specialist Husqvarna who had fun installing it on one of its devices.
It’s fun and it works
The launch of Doom is done from the mower screen. The game is installed like another application and runs simply because a robot lawn mower has the computing power today to run this distant ancestor of Call of Duty.
The game runs very smoothly on the Husqvarna mower. As for gameplay though… To control the view, you turn the wheel and click to shoot. Another button is used to move forward and the last to open the doors. Beyond the demonstration and the incongruous side, we obviously cannot imagine playing it for hours.
The strength of the Doom project at Husqvarna is the use of the mower’s Wi-Fi chip. Usually, ports focus on the single-player FPS experience, but here Husqvarna offered competitive deathmatch.
But why ?
The question that immediately arises when faced with this type of project is why? Why install Doom on a mower? This is actually an internal project for the company’s developers. A challenge that we like to take on in the field. A way to motivate teams, but also a recruitment technique.
Björn Mannefred, a robotics engineer at Husqvarna whom I was able to meet at the show, told me that this makes the company more attractive. Engineers are becoming rare and may be attracted by other large groups, notably GAFAM.
Behind this internal project, there is still a reality for the general public. In fact, a software update for Automower mowers will make it possible to actually install Doom from spring 2024. The group’s next mower will offer the ID Software game natively.
Our journalist Cassim Montilla is in Barcelona to cover MWC 2024 in its entirety, but he is there as part of a press trip organized by Qualcomm.