So, quick update using a neighbor’s driveway.
For firmware 3.8.18,
Created a “crossing area” joined by pathway to a dock-connected area. Yarbo can traverse directly to it, and return to the dock from it. That’s basically the road-crossing part, but none of the area is in the road. It’s just a place for the pathway (which IS across the road) to go to.
Created “working area” that overlaps the crossing-area. Driving the core to that overlap allows me to start a task for that working area.
When the task is complete, if it leaves the core in that overlap (just below the green dot), and the solver does not find a path back to the dock.
Driving the core a short distance, still within the overlap, and hitting the recharge button also fails to find a path back to the dock. Probably because the unconnected “working area”, being on top of the Z stack, is the first (and only) area it considers. It does not consider the lower “crossing area” which is connected.
After driving the core a short distance to a non-overlapped region of the crossing area, hitting the recharge button works as expected.
So, there we go!
And with that said, absolutely do not do it that way.
I fully expect that the order the areas were drawn in will dictate how that solver can path things around. Drawing the work-area first, I expect the solver WOULD consider the crossing-area first, and it would cross the road.
I also fully expect that if we game this overlap behavior to prevent the core from crossing a road, you’ll have a flat Yarbo about an hour after the next firmware update.
If the path solver starts looking at all the areas in an overlap when trying to get somewhere, this stops behaving like a gate, “in a flash”.
I’d keep an airgap between the working area and the crossing area, and use that gap to control the return trip to the dock.