Utah

Look what Utah ingenuity — and a desire to get out of work — has wrought

Published

2 years ago

April 21, 2024

Look what Utah ingenuity — and a desire to get out of work — has wrought

Matt Aposhian, COO of FireFly Automatix, is conducting a tour of the company’s warehouse in the industrialized part of the valley. In addition to showing off the impressive lineup of Firefly’s automated sod harvesters and driverless lawnmowers, he’s also pointing out the tens of thousands of parts that are fabricated, molded, welded, shaped, cut, bolted and painted right here on the premises to put the machines together.

When FireFly says its products are made in Utah, it means made in Utah.

“Steel and electronics come in one door,” says Matt, “fully functioning machines go out the other side.”

All of it a testament to the unlimited ingenuity of the human mind.

That and the age-old desire to get out of work.

“Our engineers joke around,” Matt says. “They say they’re inherently lazy so they think of ways to do things easier.”

Then he adds, “It would’ve been nice to have all this around when I was a kid.”

* * *

When the Aposhian kids — Matt’s three brothers and two sisters — were growing up, their father, Lawrence, ran a sod farm. Besides putting a roof over their heads and food on the table, the farm made sure the siblings were no strangers to manual labor. When the cut sod rolled off the conveyor belt, they were the ones who got to get down on their hands and knees to lift it and stack it.

“Those weren’t what I’d call the fun days,” says Matt, “but our parents were honorable people who taught us to work hard. They instilled that work ethic and an entrepreneurial spirit in us from a very young age. I think that has a lot to do with what’s happened.”

What’s happened is the invention and production of sod harvesters and lawnmowers that have taken the robotic age by storm.

The company’s automated harvesters — capable of turning what used to be a four-man operation into one driver sitting in a heated or air-conditioned cab listening to Spotify — can be found all over the U.S. and around the world, including as far away as China and South Africa.

Tanner Dixon, mechanical engineer, works on the cutting unit of a fully autonomous lawn mower at FireFly Automatix in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News

And its eagerly anticipated, just-released fully electric robotic lawnmowers — requiring no driver — have already been ordered by sod farms and golf courses.

It all goes back to the day about 16 years ago when Steve Aposhian, Matt’s older brother, decided he could make a better robotic arm than the one that kept breaking on the early self-stacking harvester Lawrence had bought for his sod farm.

Steve is the family engineer. When Steve was a teenager, Matt remembers him rigging up a motor from an electric race car to the blinds in his bedroom so he didn’t have to get out of bed to open and close the blinds.

Steve recruited a friend and fellow engineer, Will Decker, to redesign the robotic arm that kept breaking. When their version proved unbreakable, they decided to see if other sod farms might like to purchase something that was better than the original equipment.

When the response was “yes,” Steve and Will, along with another engineer friend, Eric Aston, and Matt Aposhian and his younger brother Dan formed a company they called FireFly. They set up their headquarters on Lawrence’s farm.

Then they set their sights even higher.

Lawrence Aposhian remembers the initial exchange he had with his son Steve.

“He said, ‘I want to build an entire harvester from the ground up.’ I said, ‘Well, go ahead.’ So he got his engineer buddies, they sat in my office, got on my computer, and started designing this sod harvester. At night they went into my shop, got the steel and started fabricating.”

Steve, Will and Eric recruited Sam Drake, the professor who taught them engineering at the University of Utah, to help.

In less than a year — quick work even by Elon Musk standards — they had created what Lawrence calls “this remarkable thing.”

Horizon Turf Farms, a huge sod operation in Texas, bought the first FireFly harvester; then bought 17 more.

FireFly moved out of Lawrence’s farm into a spacious warehouse and in the 12 years since, as the company has grown to 190 employees (including 30 engineers), more than 600 fully completed FireFly ProSlab harvesters have rolled out the door. Currently, the company is selling about 110 harvesters a year.

The success of the harvesters led to the six years of thinking, tinkering and fabricating that produced the just-released AMP — Autonomous Mowing Platform.

That’s a fancy way of saying a lawnmower that mows by itself.

“There’s nothing like it in the world,” says Matt. “With it being fully electric and fully autonomous, it does some things nobody else can do right now.”

Not only is a driverless 100-inch wide mower attractive to sod farms — where grass is cut as often as three times a week — but also to other places with large expanses of grass such as golf courses — a market Matt sees as the AMP’s future. There are 38,000 golf courses in the world, he points out. With a lawnmower that needs no driver, no gas and makes no noise, golf courses can mow their lawns early and late, not pollute the air and not wake anyone up. (You can see a video of the AMP in action at fireflyautomatix.com/amp-mowers/.)

* * *

As Matt concludes our warehouse tour, making sure photographer Laura Seitz hasn’t taken any photos that might give away intellectual property (FireFly is home to more than six dozen current and pending patents), he surveys an assembly line Henry Ford would be proud of and an engineering laboratory right out of Thomas Edison’s playbook.

Hearkening back to his boyhood, he sums up in a sentence what the Aposhians and their engineer friends have wrought.

“We took what were the worst jobs on the sod farm,” he says, “now they’re the best.”

The autonomy controller and battery box of a fully autonomous lawn mower are pictured at FireFly Automatix in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News

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Utah

Why Utah Represents Arizona State’s True Turning Point

Published

1 hour ago

February 28, 2026

Press Room

Why Utah Represents Arizona State’s True Turning Point

Arizona State basketball is at a crossroads. After back-to-back road losses to Baylor and TCU, the Sun Devils are suddenly fighting just to stay above .500.

Now, with Utah coming to town Saturday afternoon, this isn’t just another conference game. It feels bigger than that. It feels like the moment that decides whether this season still has life or if it quietly fades away.

The Danger of Falling Below .500

All season long, Arizona State has had one strange pattern.

Every time they dropped to .500, they responded with a win. They never let things spiral.

But now they’re sitting right on the edge again.

A loss to Utah would push them below .500 for the first time all year. That might not sound dramatic, but it matters for team morale.

Teams feel that shift. Confidence changes. Urgency changes. And with only a few games left before the Big 12 Tournament, there isn’t much time to recover.

That’s why this Utah game feels different.

Feb 21, 2026; Waco, Texas, USA; Baylor Bears guard Isaac Williams (10) scores a basket over Arizona State Sun Devils guard Anthony Johnson (2) during the second half at Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion. Mandatory Credit: Chris Jones-Imagn Images | Chris Jones-Imagn Images

Utah Is Playing Better — Especially on Defense

When these two teams met a few weeks ago, Utah was struggling.

Since then, they’ve improved. They’re still built around their top scorers, who combine for around 40 points per game, but the real difference lately has been defense.

Utah has started putting together more complete defensive performances. They’re contesting shots better. They’re finishing possessions. They’re not folding as easily in the second half.

That matters because Arizona State’s biggest issue right now isn’t effort, it’s physical depth.

Feb 21, 2026; Waco, Texas, USA; Arizona State Sun Devils head coach Bobby Hurley disputes a call with an official during the first half against the Baylor Bears at Paul and Alejandra Foster Pavilion. Mandatory Credit: Chris Jones-Imagn Images | Chris Jones-Imagn Images

The Real Niche Problem: Guard-Heavy and Worn Down

Here’s something that doesn’t get talked about enough: Arizona State’s roster balance is off.

Because of injuries, especially the likely season-ending absence of Marcus Adams Jr., the Sun Devils are extremely guard-heavy right now. More than half of the available players are guards. That creates matchup issues, especially against physical teams.

We saw it against TCU. They got to the free-throw line 36 times.

They won the physical battle. Even when their best scorer struggled, they still controlled the game inside.

ASU just doesn’t have the same frontcourt depth.

With only a few true bigs available and some undersized forwards playing bigger roles than expected, the team can get worn down.

Late in games, that shows up in missed rebounds, second-chance points, and tired legs.

It’s not about hustle. It’s about bodies.

Why Saturday Truly Matters

If Arizona State beats Utah, everything changes.

Suddenly, you’re heading into Senior Night against Kansas with momentum. Win that, and you’re talking about a possible 7–11 conference finish and a much better Big 12 Tournament matchup.

From there? Anything can happen.

But if they lose Saturday, the math and the hope get much harder.

That’s why this game isn’t just about Utah.

It’s about belief. It’s about roster limitations. And it’s about whether this team has one more push left in them before the season runs out.

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Utah

Utahns first or eroding the Utah way? House OKs measure cracking down on illegal immigration

Published

13 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Press Room

Utahns first or eroding the Utah way? House OKs measure cracking down on illegal immigration

SALT LAKE CITY — A controversial Utah proposal to crack down on the presence of immigrants in the country illegally that had seemed stalled gained new life Friday, passing muster in new form in a relatively narrow vote.

In a 39-33 vote, the Utah House approved HB386 — amended with portions of HB88, which stalled in the House on Monday — and the revamped measure now goes to the Utah Senate for consideration.

The reworked version of HB386, originally meant just to repeal outdated immigration legislation, now also contains provisions prohibiting immigrants in the country illegally from being able to tap into in-state university tuition, certain home loan programs and certain professional licensing.

The new HB386 isn’t as far-reaching as HB88, which also would have prohibited immigrants in the country illegally from being able to access certain public benefits like food at food pantries, immunizations for communicable diseases and emergency housing.

Moreover, Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton and the HB88 sponsor, stressed that the new provisions in HB386 wouldn’t impact immigrants in the country legally. He touted HB88 as a means of making sure taxpayer money isn’t funneled to programming that immigrants in the country illegally can tap.

Rep. Lisa Shepherd, R-Provo, the HB386 sponsor, sounded a similar message, referencing, with chagrin, the provision allowing certain students in the country illegally to access lower in-state tuition rates at Utah’s public universities. Because of such provisions “we’re taking care of other countries’ children first, and I want to take care of Utahns first. In my campaign I ran and said Utahns first and this bill will put Utahns first,” she said.

If we stop young folks who have lived here much of their life from going to school and getting an education, it is really clear to me that we have hurt that person. It’s not clear to me at all that we have benefitted the rest of us.

–Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful

The relatively narrow 39-33 vote, atypical in the GOP-dominated Utah Legislature, followed several other narrow, hotly contested procedural votes to formally amend HB386. Foes, including both Democrats and Republicans, took particular umbrage with provisions prohibiting immigrants in the country illegally from being able to pay in-state tuition and access certain scholarships.

As is, students in the country illegally who have attended high school for at least three years in Utah and meet other guidelines may pay lower in-state tuition, but if they have to pay out-of-state tuition instead, they could no longer afford to go to college.

“If we stop young folks who have lived here much of their life from going to school and getting an education, it is really clear to me that we have hurt that person. It’s not clear to me at all that we have benefitted the rest of us,” said Rep. Ray Ward, R-Bountiful.

Rep. Hoang Nguyen, D-Salt Lake City, noted her own hardscrabble upbringing as an immigrant from Vietnam and said the changes outlined in the reworked version of HB386 run counter to what she believes Utah stands for.

“I fear that what we’re doing here in Utah is we are eroding what truly makes Utah special, the Utah way. We are starting to adopt policies that are regressive and don’t take care of people. Utahns are one thing. Citizens are one thing. People is the first thing,” she said.

Rep. John Arthur, D-Cottonwood Heights, said the measure sends a negative message to the immigrant students impacted.

“If we pass this bill today, colleagues, we will be telling these young people — again, who have graduated from our high schools, these kids who have gone to at least three years of school here — that you’re no longer a Utahn,” he said.

If we are compassionate to those who come the legal way and we are compassionate to those who already live here, that does not mean that we lack compassion for others in other ways.

–Rep. Kristen Chevrier, R-Highland

Rep. Kristen Chevrier, R-Highland, said the debate underscores a “fallacy” about compassion. She backed the reworked version of HB386, saying Utah resources should be first spend on those in the country legally.

“If we are compassionate to those who come the legal way and we are compassionate to those who already live here, that does not mean that we lack compassion for others in other ways,” she said.

The original version of HB386 calls for repeal of immigration laws on the books that are outdated because other triggering requirements have not been met or they run counter to federal law.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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