Comment by albertzeyer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by albertzeyer | Hacker News Reader

> 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 recently (a few weeks ago) bought one. While researching on the available options (which seemed relevant to me), actually almost none of the robots work this way. Most of them systematically go through the lawn. I think from those that I checked, only the Worx Landroid does it randomly.

I was searching for some model which works without wires, because I was too lazy to set this up. Basically, in general, I wanted sth which required as little effort as possible.

I decided for eufy E15, which uses camera (no GPS, no wires, no lidar, nothing else really). And it just seems to work. It creates a map first, and then systematically goes over the lawn. I didn't really need to do anything.

(I'm not affiliated with eufy in any way. I'm just quite happy with it so far.)

That said, obviously, having an open source variant of such a robot would be even nicer (if it works)! So I'm quite happy to see such a project.

This robot here uses GPS, as far as I can see, as the sole technique for navigation and localization. From reports that I have read, GPS mostly works fine, except for some cases where it does not (where GPS coverage is not great). Camera on the other side always works (during daytime). Maybe this could be added to this project? Of course, using the camera is probably quite a bit more complicated, and more prone to errors, but overall might be more robust and reliable.

I have a Husqvarna and wouldn't be happier. It also randomly mows the lawn. I haven't paid a landscaper service forb3 years now. The only yard work I would need to care for are edge and bush trim. I have mostly flat yard with the size of 5000 sqft.

Wouldn’t it be kidnapped easily if it doesn’t use wires or GPS?

The sudden desire to add a small LLM and speech synthesizer so the mower can yell for help in a stranger danger scenario.

I often wonder about this.

I think GPS is essential. Tie it to a location - if stolen, it won't operate. Then a way to text you if it is moved outside the designated area. Telling you where it is.

At that point, I suppose it would still be worth stealing just for the battery? A hard problem to solve.

The problem with gps is it doesn't work (reliably) under trees which many lawns have. Since trees are common in yards they need something else anyway and at that point you can get rid of the gps

Need to get the multi-gnss like my cycling computer from Garmin has

It's so accurate it's scary. Shows me the what side of the road I'm on and even shows me how much I'm in the lane lol

that doesn't help when there is no signal which happens. Sometimes you can use other input to get more accurate, but only sometimes

> if stolen, it won't operate.

I can assure you it won't have level of protection like say iPhone, there will be a factory reset button in the mower.

Not super helpful if it doesn't have a way to communicate to the outside world. Some of the companies solve this by adding a cell module that can send an SOS, but it usually requires a monthly/yearly fee to maintain the cell connection.

Third law of robotics: self protect!

In my case, my lawn isn't easily accessible and also not visible from the street (because the house and garage is between the street and the garden), and I trust my neighbors. So, I think (I hope) this isn't so much an issue for my case.

I think the eufy has also an optional GPS module just for this purpose, to better track it. I don't think this GPS module has any other purpose (e.g. it would not be used for navigation). But I didn't really checked the details on this.

I have seen this a few times for such robots, that you can buy an optional GPS module for tracking.

Maybe instead of GPS or camera, it could have a local positioning system instead. 3 small, solar powered beacons can be installed around the yard to be mowed.

I have seen such variants as well, where you actually need to install some antennas (RTK antennas?).

But that was already too much effort for me, so that's why I chose the eufy. Also, from reports that I have read, it doesn't necessarily work better with antennas. Actually, from reports that I have read, robots with camera-only had the least amount of reports where navigation was not properly working. At least that was my impression.

This doesn't use GPS directly, as that would have insufficient accuracy. It uses RTK, which calculates relative position from a base station very accurately.

RTK GPS still struggles underneath heavy foliage. You still need a GPS signal. The OpenMower project has an accelerometer in it for dead reckoning, but it needs to get back to a GPS lock pretty quickly or it'll lose positional accuracy quite quickly.

How large is your lawn and is it mostly flat ? I want to try one for my lawn but I have very large lawn and one side is slopy/steep.

Maybe 300 m^2 or so.

The eufy E15 is for up to 800 m^2. There is the eufy E18 for up to 1200 m^2.

I have seen other (more expensive, bigger) robots for much larger lawns.

My garden is relatively flat with a few bumps here and there.

You can also easily mark some areas of the lawn as always excluded so that it wont drive there.

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