PARSONS, Kan. — The Parsons Schools maintenance crew has a new tool they’re using to paint sporting fields.

The “Turf Tank Robot” field painter was purchased this year.

It normally takes five crew members about four or five hours to complete an entire football field – but the new robot now does it in about an hour and a half.

It’s connected to a satellite using a GPS station, through which the fields are mapped out. Administrators said the accuracy of the lines amazes them.

“It’s nice because we can make our game feel like twice as good and we can also get all the stuff clean and stadium, making sure all the locker rooms are ready at the same time. So it’s basically we double up our hours, so we’re making the field look good and doing other stuff at the same time,” said Paxton Swanson.

“We went from a V to having an actual Viking, an image on the field like your colleges with a football around it. To me that’s something that would I don’t know that you could do by hand without a machine doing it,” said Eric Bortz.

Superintendent Lori Ray said the robot was well worth the investment. It’s used weekly on the district’s fields.