u/NoTelevision6661

We have a couple of acres that needs to be kept "in check" - not mowing a path to the house in May means fighting through mower height "grass" and mosquitoes / ticks:

https://www.reddit.com/r/automower/comments/1f3kw66/robomower_for_23_acres_trees_moles_pigs_slopes/

- There are too many trees for pure-GPS setups to work.

- There are too many sticks/holes for 2WD mowers to work

- There is too much open space for "bumble bee" navigation (bounce around inside a wire) to be effective

I'd been waiting for Husqvarna to release a vision / GPS enabled AWD robot. Those units ARE nice from a hardware standpoint. They seem to be out of their depth in software.

I'd been ignoring all the prototypes (Luba / Yarbo / Lymow etc) - I'm not the R&D department and this isn't the place for units that need handholding

Segway released the X4. It's from a real company, it's "ok" from a hardware perspective (looks like it'll last 5 years), the 4WD setup looks like it can navigate wet grass and holes without tearing everything up, and it looks like the software (app; vision + GPS combination) is genuinely good enough to be autonomous and not a pain in the ass to setup.

It has been so far. Older feedback here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SegwayNavimow/comments/1tjp3tm/comment/on7iixr/?context=1

• Yes - the 4WD works plenty well enough for anything that isn't going to break your ankle or cause you to lose your boot in the mud. (places that are soggy and wet enough to get a 2WD ride-on stuck/sinking are fine with the little robot)
• Yes - the vision works (even if you do the "don't do this" stuff such as set it going in a new area at night) though it is perhaps a little cautious if anything; taking a few goes to mow down danelions and leaving ever-larger areas of tall grass around trees.
• Yes - the RTK (local) works, the 4G works where a phone works (though we have ace LTE coverage here), the WiFi is decent (fine for a 100 metre radius from the wooden house), and the app is reasonable.
• Yes - it cuts grass and appears to have had some thought put into dealign with wet grass / pollen dust on cameras etc.

Cut height is set to 60 mm (high enough to clear pine cones; low enough to actually cut the gras rather than flattening it. The light mower mot sucking up pine cones, slicing them in half mid air, then crushing the sharp cut pieces into the ground like a ride-on mower is a decent bonus.

So much so that I have purchased a second one to do the rest of the property / act as a backstop for the first unit. (I'm genuinely impressed and am not somebody who is readily impressed)

Things not advertised:

• Noise. These units have cheap drive motors and gearing. They sound like "four baritone mosquitoes" in operation. The kind of variable whining sound that a mosquito makes that your brain will zero in on; but at a lower pitch. Fail by Segway there. Daytime mowing only as they'll piss you off at night with a window open if the area is quiet. Husqvarna units are SILENT by comparison.
• Cutting time. They're rated for 80 hours/week. When cutting large areas you set these to "continuous mowing" (just keep going over and when you finish start again -during these scheduled hours). 5000 m2 with any obstacles is challenging - this genuinely takes 24 hours - hence deploying two units at 3500 ish m2 each rather than buying a single commercial Terramow.
• Setup advice. There are few details about what each of the settings mean and the downsides (should I choose efficient vs standard mowing for our land? why would you ever turn off camera assisted navigation / traction control? etc) No guidance on how the sensor fusion/mapping happens (it appears that the robot collects camera data when in operation then when docked uses all of the processing power to blend the images/GPS data into a model that it can subsequently use for navigation)
• I say: Map the yard boundary manually. Set it to go find all the obstacles such as trees. Then set vision fence off around those trees and draw them in as manual no-go areas. This will avoid the unit leaving every-larger areas of uncut grass as it has a panic-attack about a dandelion.
• Placement advice. Should we be leaving these out in the rain (to get washed!) or should we be truing to cover these? Can they live under a deck or do they need to live in the open?
• App is robust but limited. You can't sit at your PC and map things nicely. You're messing about with a phone.
• No guidance on how two mowers interact (I'm taking a gamble on these being able to dock themselves close to each other without thinking that the other unit is a funny looking badger and stopping / without the time-of-flight sensors going nuts etc)

Hardware ideas:

It's really rather good.

• Sort the mosquito drives out. This would be anti-social if there were neighbours and is annoying enough when the property is occupied that we don't cut the grass at all when we're there.
• Upgrade the charger output. These things are limited not by their battery capacity (I have it set to use 15-70% of the battery to try extend life, as it doesn't really matter how often it recharges when the limits on mowing speed are cut rate/charge rate)
• There's no parts catalogue, online shop for spares, online list of standard bearing sizes, list of error codes etc. This isn't a cheap throwaway item. It is going to get worn / attacked by a wild hog / wrap a particularly stringy piece of raspberry cane around itself and die etc. Let's have a proper exploded diagram / parts listing / webshop.

Software ideas:

• Mitigate the mosquito drive noise by setting limits on derivative (how quickly the unit is allowed to change the speed of a drive motor) - if pre-planned into the path planning model you can manage the accel and decel of the unit better to avoid the mosquito like variation in pitch
• Dial back the energy state when not mowing (the standby power draw is absurd on these) Charge to 100% just before scheduled mowing begins (an easy fix to boost the initial mowing run)
• Give the option to dial up the transit speed when returning to base / not cutting and there's no limit except mechanics on how fast you're moving
• Say what you see. Flag the obstacles by type such that certain classes can be obeyed (e.g. trees) and others can be ignored (e.g. dandelions or particularly fat blades or grass) rather than turning vision off entirely.
• Allow use of a web app (not just a phone app)
• Allow me to draw maps based on GPS data (the land is marked by the geo survey; I should be able to import those boundaries and then draw my zones on this such as where the reduced height footpaths with increased-height boundary markers go)
• Allow me to export the map (I'd like to know where the trees are...and I'd like to use the robot as an geo mapping tool (drive it along the route that the cables / septic system are buried and then transfer this to the map to not lose these; or drive it over where I've just planted the tulip bulbs and have it not mow these rather than waiting for them to appear then mapping around them!)
• Allow me to upload a saved map (e.g. if Mower 1 breaks, then have Mower 2 do the important bits nearest the house - or allow me to loan this to a mate for the day so they can you "hell yeah I want one of those" without me then having to remap everything <<salespeople take note!)
• Map the LTE / WiFi coverage as you go (easy enough to put RSSI vs location?)
• Allow offline mode (to opt out of further firmware updates and run with local RTK / local vision processing only)

Genuinely impressed. Wish it were quieter. A few software tweaks could make it more awesome.