[micheljansen]

"Let's be honest: The current generation of robotic lawn mowers sucks. Basically all of these bots drive in a random direction until they hit the border of the lawn, rotate for a randomized duration and repeat. I think we can do better!"

The funny thing is: this actually works incredibly well. Perimeter wires are a PITA to install, but once that's done, they are a very practical and flawless method for making sure the robot does not escape into the neighbour's yard or worse. The random movement is really effective too. What exactly can a smart robot do better?

Removing the need for perimeter wires would be great, as long as it works 100% flawlessly. Obstacle detection would also be nice, so I can avoid my mower chewing up the toys my kid sometimes leaves lying around (though it is a great motivation to clean up!)

[razemio]

I have a Mammotion Yuba and trust me, the grass looks awesome as a grid or in lines. It can even do logos. So far nicer looking grass and much faster then random.

[ai-christianson]

I have a mix of older automowers (e.g. 315x) and newer bots like navimow x330.

The navimow does "mini stripes" and they do look nice, but the grass tends to look a little more "carpet" like with the automower randomized pattern.

[zamadatix]

It looks like obstacle avoidance is the key thing remaining in the software todos. For positioning it seems you get your pick of RTK GPS sensors, so it'd be interesting to still support guide wires for "escape protection".

[foobarian]

Regardless of how good the perimeter wire bots are, it's also not true that the more advanced generation "sucks." I have one and it works perfectly fine (Mammotion Luba 2). The hardware is great, positioning is great; there is always stuff to nitpick on the software side but at the end of the day that's great as well.