Environment States/Groups for Managing Multiple No-Go Zones

Suggestion and Feature Requests
1

Overview

Certain seasonal or temporary conditions can make specific areas of a yard unsuitable for mowing. Examples include flooding, soft ground after heavy rain, fallen fruit or nuts, seasonal plant growth, or other environmental factors.

I would like to propose an Environment State feature that allows users to create named conditions (for example: Flood Zones, Wet Season, Fallen Fruit, etc.) and associate one or more no-go zones with each state.

When an Environment State is enabled, all linked no-go zones would automatically become active. When the Environment State is disabled, all linked no-go zones would automatically be deactivated.

As a simpler alternative, the same goal could be achieved by allowing users to create groups of no-go zones that can be enabled or disabled together.

Use Case

I have a pond that is just under one acre in size. Each spring (typically March through June), significant rainfall causes the pond level to rise. Water seeps into portions of my lawn, creating areas with standing water or ground that is too soft to support mowing.

Some affected areas extend up to 15 feet from the shoreline. To prevent the mower from entering these locations, I have created multiple no-go zones around the pond.

As conditions improve, I must manually inspect these areas and individually enable or disable each no-go zone based on whether the ground has become firm enough for mowing. This process is time-consuming and increases the risk of accidentally disabling a zone before conditions are suitable.

With an Environment State named Flood Zones, I could simply turn the state on when flooding occurs and turn it off once the ground has recovered. All associated no-go zones would update automatically.

Benefits

  • Saves time by eliminating the need to manually enable or disable multiple no-go zones.
  • Reduces the likelihood of user error.
  • Provides a simple way to manage seasonal or temporary mowing restrictions.
  • Improves mower safety by preventing operation in unsuitable conditions.
  • Scales well for many different scenarios beyond flooding.

Proposed Implementation

  1. Add an Environment States section within the map editing Create menu.
  2. Allow users to create and define custom names.
  3. Add a Link Environment State option when editing a no-go zone.
  4. Allow a no-go zone to be associated with one or more Environment States.
  5. When an Environment State is enabled or disabled, all linked no-go zones automatically update their status.

Alternatively, implement a simpler No-Go Zone Grouping feature that allows multiple no-go zones to be enabled or disabled together.

Applicability

This feature would primarily benefit the lawn mower module, but it could also be useful for the snow blower module and potentially other future outdoor robotics products.

Thank you for your consideration.

2

I’m thinking you can assign a go-no go zone for these areas. Then as your needs arise, you could turn the zone on or off as needed. If on, the area would be ignored, when turned off, the area would be mowed.

Item 5 (or grouping No-go zones) would need addition programing

3

They also need to add the ability to turn NGZs off and on in each individual workplan along with groups.

4

Yes, manually turning them off and on is how I’m managing today. But it’s a lot…it’s like 6 or 8 and I made a mistake recently that sent my Yarbo into mud because I disabled the wrong NGZ. There are so many and because the map is not translucent, allowing the background to show through, such mistakes can be easy to make.

5

Thank you for sharing your suggestion. I’ll continue to monitor feedback from the community on this feature, and if more users express the same interest, I’ll pass it along to the team for consideration.