GPS Enabled Robot Mowers

He has the Husqvarna. He has had it for probably 7 or 8 years. It works great! It mows every day. It only cuts about 1/8 of an inch off. It uses a blade kind of like a single edge razor blade. He has a house in NC (where the mower is located) and a house in TN. When he is in TN , Mow as he calls it, keeps the grass nicely trimmed.

I own Teslas with autonomy software. People worry a lot about software on the car making a mistake that will somehow get someone hurt. I'm suppposed actively to supervise it every moment it is driving the car.

So for the mowers, how much issue is there with it running into something or running over (and thus mowing) something it should not?

Just curious.

That looks pretty cool. But (I assume) it depends on connecting to their cloud/servers to operate? I have never looked into robotic mowers, but most robotic stuff today is dependent on a connection to servers with their proprietary software (as opposed to something that can run all by itself with no internet connection).

If that's the case, then my concern would be how long will that little company be around (they are apparently only about 4 years old) and what will happen if they go out of business? I know there are stories of people who bought robot vacuum cleaners that are now just "bricks" that the company no longer supports.

Customer support is a definite concern, as it is with many products.

In the case of Lymow, the machine is completely autonomous and does not require a wifi or cellular connection. It uses on board software and navigates by GPS and TRK signals. Spare parts, like mower blades, etc. would be my biggest concern

…and areas that are not supposed to be mowed. Kind of like the Invisible Fence for dogs. It stays within that area. Also, if you are walking and get in the mowers path, it will bump you and then change course. They also know when their battery is getting low on a charge. When this happens, they go back to the charging port. Pretty interesting to watch.

The wire systems have been around for a few years now, but the newer generation of robot mowers use GPS & RTK for navigation. In the case of the Lymow, up to 80 different zones can be programmed. They can be created for very irregular areas and will avoid pre programmed "no mow" zones. Cameras detect movable obstacles and direct the mower to either stop or go around them.

I was not previously familiar with the term RTK, though I had heard of super-high accuracy measurements that use the GPS satellite as a signal source enabling precision differential measurement to a reference location.

So may I assume that the mower using RTK requires a base station location with a good view of GPS satellites which stays put?

Yes, the RTK (Real Time Kinematic) transceiver is mounted outside in a fixed location with a good view of the sky. It receives GPS signals and transmits correction data to the mower providing centimeter level accuracy. I'm not sure how it's powered but solar would be a good choice.