Slope Nibbler Pattern

This major storm taught me a lesson. Plows came by and tossed BIG snow into my area. Rover got stuck at bottom of driveway because he was trying to go down then turn around on that first pass. I gave up because it was so dark and cold and still snowing like crazy. A good solution for me would be a NIBBLER PATTERN. Following the slope, start at the top edge, auger down blowing snow for maybe 2 or 3 feet. Back straight up with NO TURNS, move over the specified overlap, and repeat until he’s done one row of the area. Then repeat moving down the slope until it gets to the end. This pattern would have saved me tonight. Seems like it ought to be a pretty easy pattern to calculate. Can turn the auger off while backing up to save battery.

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Are you using slope mode there?

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Yeah. I do use the slope mode. High at the garage down to the street level. It’s no fault of the system Bryan, I have a couple erroneous jigs down by the street, plus the plows had thrown probably 2’ of compacted street snow into my area. I expected some trouble but hoped for the best. Decided to send it anyway. It went down and made a turn, got in a tight spot and all of it’s escape moves just served to get it into a no traction situation. HOWEVER - if there were this pattern I call the NIBBLER Pattern, I would have used it straight away, and I’m nearly certain it could have cleared even that deep plowed snow by “nibbling” at it from the high side in my driveway. If that pattern was available, I would cut my driveway area shorter, and use the NIBBLER pattern down near the driveway/street transition. In fact, initially I had made separate areas for main driveway and street transition, but at some point foolishly deleted that and made one long area. I’ll likely remap again at some point soon to go back to that scenario.

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+ a billion :heart: for the nibbler! :grimacing:

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Thanks for sharing your detailed experience and the suggestion for the slope “NIBBLER” pattern. We really appreciate you taking the time to explain the use case and scenario. If more users express similar interest or needs, I’ll be sure to pass this feedback along to our product team for consideratio

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Yes, slope pattern is used but not adaptive slope.

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Adjustable reverse/turn around settings for slope mode would definitely help, it could be dynamic, it tries going down the slope, if it makes it without slipping and having to back up it continues until it starts encountering heavier resistance, at that point it sets a point perpendicular to the slope and uses that as the furthest travel point until it’s cleared a few lanes without issue, then it could come back and try to progress further. Sounds like a fun recursive programming project :grin:

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This NIBBLER hit 5! 5 more!

NIBBLE NIBBLE NIBBLE

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Haha! Go man go!! The New England Nibblah!!!

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That’s another good idea, but wouldn’t work for me. First, I won’t let it move all the way through the plowed pile, because they don’t get close enough to the curb. It would have to run into the middle of the street before it would be clear enough to safely make the turn, then also being deep into a pile of plowed snow, I wouldn’t trust that it could back up on a slope straight enough to avoid knocking some of the side snow down and again, getting itself stuck. I’m gonna stick with my original post - take a small yarbo length bite using the slope as set, back up, move over the overlap amount and repeat moving from side to side and gradually working down the driveway until the area is done. BEst chance for success IMO.

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Yeah that’s definitely the ultimate mode for worst case scenario, I’m just finding that even the current slope mode takes quite a bit longer and more power so suggesting some possible options for more efficiency on lighter but still heavy enough to hamper using a normal mode.:+1:

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This is exactly the behavior I manually created by creating a series of parallel ‘sidewalks‘ at my driveway’s apron.

The point was for Yarbo to drive straight down the first sidewalk into the snow pile at the apron clearing the snow, back up, then move over to the next sidewalk and repeat the process. This would continue again and again with each parallel sidewalk until the apron was fully cleared.

This system worked until the recent firmware update that caused Yarbo to malfunction on sidewalks.

A ‘nibbled’ pattern would be great and would be a much better version of what I had created. Great idea!

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Found some videos of me doing this manually earlier this season when slope mode and zero turns kept getting stuck…wanted to see if the hardware was actually capable and it is…just needs better programming

Google Photos

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Yep, that’s sort of the idea, but with a coded process it would likely be much more methodical and precise. Doing it manually would be extremely time consuming and uncomfortable even from inside at the living room window.

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