Best Robot Lawn Mower: My Backyard has become a Lawn Mower Test Lab

Old robotic lawn mowers lawn mowers used boundaries to determine where they could and could not do so, and there were problems. The boundary had to make a perfect, unbroken circle. And if something happened to the wire, there was a problem. These days, Robot Mowers works via GPS, but with RTK beacons it’s a bit extra GPS. Scott Porteous, head of Robotics at Husqvarna, broke it for me.

GPS navigation

Today’s GPS is accurate to a few feet. When you’re navigating your car, it’s fine Looking for Tupperware in the woodsbut that’s not good for things like property lines. Real-time kinematic beacons also communicate with GPS satellites to provide fixed locations on Earth that the satellites know. Essentially, the RTK Beacon tells the satellite “I’m always here.” Meanwhile, the mower runs around, and the beacon tells the mower that he thinks it’s five feet north. So the mower needs to get where the GPS is reading and adjust accordingly. This allows the robotic lawnmower to drop accurately down to centimeters.

GPS coverage

Another thing to consider is general GPS coverage. If you live in the suburbs, you are more likely to be able to find spots in your yard to install base stations and RTK beacons. If you live in the city, it can be challenging. Also, wherever you set up your mower, you need to be within Wi-Fi range for the mower to work properly. A lawn mower like Yalvo gets an Ethernet cable that actually runs to the router. If you decide to go to Yalvo, that’s what you need to do.

Cut the width

Robotic lawn mowers have many challenges in narrow paths. The reason for this is due to their blades and their overall construction. For example, the Segway lawn mower chassis is 20.5 inches and is 9 inches wide. One of the small bots, Sunseeker has a width of 14 inches with an 8 inches cutting width. This does not help to cut narrow paths. Even if the mower’s body fits there, it cannot be at right angles to cut all the grass. Mainly, they just wiggle back and forth, and it doesn’t do much.

Camera system

Most lawn mowers have camera systems that allow you to navigate through obstacles. Eufy relies on its camera system and cannot work at all at night. Other mowers have the ability to turn off night mowing, as obstacle detection is much worse for obvious reasons.

Scheduling

Because all mowers have scheduling capabilities, mowers are only run when needed. Some lawn mowers take into account the weather – if it’s raining when it’s time to mow, it delays mowing. It is important to remember that consistent mowing times are extremely important for proper mower operation, so grasses don’t get too long to handle it.

Human surveillance

Finally, it is important to remember that a robotic lawn mower is truly a robot. Humans can see a patch of grass and know exactly how to get through it. Robots, not that much. It can be frustrating to see a lawnmower slip through the grass.

If you’re not obsessed with a lawn mower (as I had to do to review), you might come back after running the cycle and see the patches you skipped. As a human, you may have to clean up after a robotic lawnmower, but that will result in much less work than doing everything yourself.

My backyard is a great minefield of obstacles and achievements that embody almost every condition you may have in your garden. I have a trampoline and none of the lawnmowers appear to be navigable (the support pipe on the ground could not climb). My tree is big and its roots protrude from the ground. I have a dog that was interested in a new robot friend going back and forth across the grass. There is also a fair amount of landscaping and some narrow roads where the mower did no good work.

My front yard is much easier except that neither of my neighbors have a boundary between their property lines and mine. So I had to rely on GPS and RTK beacons to test. They proved to be accurate enough. I programmed one of the lawnmowers to cut my elderly neighbor’s garden (one other than a colorful garden). This is why you don’t ruin a technical reviewer.

During my testing time, temperatures changed significantly from 40°F to over 90°F. Welcome to the Midwest. There were also some storms, including one heavy rain that didn’t kill the bots, so that’s a plus.

After all the mowers did that, I waited a few days for the grass to grow to test the next one, but not for mowing, not for maintenance. I’ve put these mowers at the pace of the last six weeks, but I expect them to require long-term testing. This list will be updated with released lawn mowers. Also, make sure to check even if you’ve never reached this time.