A solution to Thumb Fatigue - use phone or tablet tilt!

Suggestion and Feature Requests
1

Doing complex mapping or manual mowing takes a lot of thumb dexterity.
Consider a control mode where Yarbo responds to the TILT of the phone or tablet:

  • Thumb press required to run (“dead man”)
  • Tilt forward, yarbo goes forward proportional to tilt.
  • Same for left, right and back.
    To stop, lift your thumb.
    Maybe double tap to set zero angles.
    I think that this could make control easier and more intuitive.
    It could be an alternative to the N-S-E_W present controller.
8 Likes
2

I like this idea. Use the phone gyroscopes and accelerometers to control the Yarbo. That would be very handy indeed. Pun intended.

3 Likes
3

Add an additional dead-man (thumb press button) that will exactly and only allow forward and reverse.

When this other dead-man is pressed, Yarbo uses the IMU and vision to ENFORCE a straight line either forward, or back. When a user wishes to turn, they can use the first dead-man button.

5 Likes
4

I concur! Finished mapping my 3rd acre today with dead ends and NGZ, and the thumb is indeed getting tired!!

But the worse of it is having a transient GPS drop at 98% of a large area and not being able to capture the last “waypoint with GPS” despite being on it directly… Then you remap and for whatever reason it works perfectly…

Although this functionality would be a nice to have, better management of GPS drops is urgently needed… would even help with thumb fatigue by not having to remap several times the same zone because of brief GPS drops…

1 Like
5

Give this post some love. Audible and have the rover stop when it loses GPS would be ideal for this. Audible (vibrate?) Notification when GPS status changes while mapping

3 Likes
6

Done!

But even if you stop right when you see the GPS icon becoming yellow (so similar to if you have a sound or vibration), more often than not it says to “drive back to the last way point with GPS” and honestly, it worked only 1-2 times… Most of the time it doesn’t capture the point and you have to start all over again… So if it is impossible to fix the GPS drop, focusing on the recovery becomes the next priority…

2 Likes
7

Thank you for sharing your suggestion — we really appreciate your creative idea, and we’ll be sure to pass it along to our product team for consideration. While we agree that tilt-based control could make operation more intuitive, we’re afraid this isn’t something planned for the near term. That said, feedback like yours plays an important role in shaping future features, so please keep it coming!

2 Likes