I have been playing with my Yarbo mower for about a week now. I see lots of potential with the mower, but still lots of work to make it a reliable product in complex and sloped yards. My comparison standard is my AWD Husqvarna which I literally need to intervene with maybe once every two months excluding blade changes (and I have been running for 4 years). That is what Yarbo needs to aspire to! What the Husqvarna does super well is that it can negotiate the significant slopes in my yard (30-35 degrees) while dealing with typical black metal fencing around the yard including the back and side edges of sloped areas and several landscape beds that are also in one of the sloped areas. Its secret is its size, wheel design, maneuverability and AWD. It avoids getting trapped or stuck because it doesn’t follow a pre-defined cut pattern and if it gets in an awkward position it maneuvers around until it is back in a stable position to move easily. It doesn’t tear up my grass because it never gets into positions to slip. Now the Yarbo is not the Husqvarna and I don’t share this to say this is better or worse, but to suggest thinking about how to have the Yarbo navigate complex and sloped yards easily and not fight gravity!
Don’t let Yarbo start doing backup wheelies or let its tracks slip! When it encounters resistance immediately get it to maneuver so that it isn’t fighting slope gravity AND THEN get it back on its pre-defined pattern. Allow the user-defined pattern optimization to help (see below).
It needs to do a better job recognizing obstacles like fences with its lawn attachment on. The perimeter mapping seems to not always factor the extra length of the mower attachment when moving in the yard especially if it is trying to turn around or move to recharge for example. I am a bit terrified when I receive the trimmer attachment on how Yarbo will deal with its even longer length. Also fences, especially those that define the bottom of a slope need to be something that Yarbo can handle easily. This was the fatal flaw of my first Husqvarna. It got stuck too many times at the bottom of a sloped area next to a fence. It took the AWD model to solve this. Advertising you can negotiate a certain slope means you can negotiate it ALL THE TIME and not just going uphill in a straight line! If you want to break into the large suburban market you need to be able to deal with fences, no-go zones and slopes all together!
I really like the pattern cutting features and the angle adjustment option, but an easy way to make slope cutting easier is to allow user sub-mapping of an area to allow slopes to be mowed in a parallel way and another slope to be mowed with a different angle so that it is also parallel. I have two long slopes that are nearly at 90 degrees of each other and I can set the mower to make one easier to cut, but then the other is cut literally up and down and that doesn’t play to Yarbo’s strength. I know some folks create multiple areas and then connect them. Tried that, but it is a hard to map accurately without causing area overlap or leaving unmowed gaps. This same idea of use control of mowing pattern in a sub-area also would allow smaller areas between no-go zones (landscape beds) to be set to cut in favorable parallel angles instead of again. To program this please let the user highlight these sub-areas on the map (not force rover mapping). I like where you were headed with the no-go zone square/rectangle and circle defined mapping.
Narrow up/down strips of land on a slope within an area. Allow dead ends within an area not just adjacent to an area and have them prevent area mowing patterns from mowing them. I can draw dead ends inside an area, but the mower first wants to execute its total area mowing pattern and then of course it doesn’t mow the dead end as a dead end, it tries to mow it as part of the pattern first and gets stuck. Maybe I am not doing this right?
I know others have mentioned this, but you definitely need to take more advantage of the x,y,z axis information of the rover to assist with slope mowing.
Happy to share more info if that helps.