Snowblowing on top of "mower" maps gives the snowblower unprecedented freedom, may not always be desired?

Yarbo Product Talk Yarbo Snowblower
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Snowblower navigation feedback (probably mostly for the Yarbo folks, but others may get a heads up or find it interesting as well):

My property is covered with Areas, both for mowing and snowblowing. The snowblower navigates “mower” Areas to get to where it needs to do its work.

When I had Areas just for snowblowing and NONE for any other purpose, the Areas were smaller and isolated, and I could create Pathways and Sidewalks and fully control where the snowblower goes and how it gets there.

I added “mower” Areas over the summer. I have 100% overlapped Areas now (small snowblower Areas within huge mower Areas), Pathways here and there, Sidewalks, No-go Zones, and so on. “Not supposed to,” but there’s basically no choice unless I want to delete Areas. It seems to work “well enough” – I suspect there have been navigation changes to at least deal with Area overlaps (thank you if so – I am able to get the snowblower where it needs to go, despite overlaps, by using Sidewalks or Pathways).

Unfortunately I no longer have “full control” over what Pathways and navigation the snowblower uses.

  • I have Pathways only the mower can get through because of size. I need to keep the snowblower out, but the snowblower wants to use those Pathways. (There is a bug I found where you can’t use tricks like alternative Sidewalks, additional Pathways, or No-go Zones to get around this – the snowblower INSISTS on using the mower’s Pathways even though there are better alternatives – they’re fixing that bug – case 142849.)

  • I created a Sidewalk in a front corner of my house, and that was the last item in the Work Plan. The navigation decided not to return back out the Sidewalk and instead continued on to navigate over a “mower” Area around the house to get to the Docking Station. The Sidewalk became one-way, and the snowblower went a route I didn’t necessarily want it to so it could recharge. It got bogged down in the older snow there and couldn’t make it through.

  • Despite a Pathway being used last winter for the snowblower to get to my Garages (which I mapped again for this winter), the snowblower cuts it close to the corner of my house, following the border of a “mower” Area. I want it to take the Pathway, as it did last winter, which gets it a few feet away from the house and around a slight incline where it gets stuck. (I can probably work around this by creating a long Pathway, sure.)

  • As with the mower, the snowblower may create its own navigation through a “mower” Area to get from place to place. I’ve had the snowblower cut straight across my lawn, which makes sense given how navigation works. But it’s not what I’d like to happen. Is the mower now going to navigate across snowblower Areas and Pathways in my driveway now? That’d be bad.

For the mower this type of “loose” navigation is kinda OK (not the driveway part, though). However with a snowblower, I think there’s a bit more danger here, as you’ve got a spinning and very unforgiving auger out in the open, plus a larger module.

In addition, when the snowblower decides to choose its own navigation paths across some Area, it’s not guaranteed clear passage in the snow. Should I decide to change the order of a Work Plan, the snowblower could decide to attempt to cut across a foot of snow that’s been sitting there freezing for a month. It’s not going to get through. We should have a bit more control over what Areas and Pathways are available to the snowblower at any time. Clearing snow is a different beast from mowing. I want to be able to consistently clear snow to keep Areas and paths open all winter.

It has been a bit of an adjustment going from a snowblower-only map where I had everything dialed in last winter to a map shared with other modules. I didn’t think about the changes in navigation that would happen when the snowblower gets the freedom of the mower across more Areas/Pathways.

This gets back to the topic of map filtering for a particular module, not really a new topic, just some new observations here in my case. There are topics out in the Forum regarding filtering mapped elements for each module type, probably some from “me” last spring when I realized this would be an issue, and I’ve seen some more recent somewhat related posts.

Anyway, I shall continue refining my always-under-refinement winter maps. If y’all find the observations valid, useful, and a “heads up,” that’s cool.

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Great observations. I deleted all my summer maps. I left the NGZs in place but for the winter I only have S1 mapped out maps. Mine definitely used B1 mapped grass work areas to solve issues. I, like you, do not want that.

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I deleted my summer areas but only around my winter areas. (3 areas in total deleted) I have lots of summer areas that remain and since they are no where near the winter area they are not a factor.

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Hey Ken! Welcome back. Yes, it’s a known issue with it taking mowing area shortcuts. Best thing to do is delete pathways to these areas or to save your maps and delete the mowing areas and restore in spring. They are working on the filtering.

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I ended up leaving the areas but deleting some of the pathways between them. Also found a bug they’re working on where Yarbo with follow the perimeter of a no-go zone out of a mapped area to get where it wants to go😅

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Now they are working on filtering? Wow really they didn’t think of that before now?

I had mine go rogue one day, I told it to charge after I gave up on mapping an area as a long area, or as 2 long sidewalks, I gave up, cold fingers and an afternoon shot. It was on a pathway headed towards the charger. I saw it headed the correct way so I walked away to do something in the shop. I looked out to see if it was charging and found it not there. I headed to the otherside of the yard only to see it snowblowing in the grass. And somehow it picked a very low height to snowblow, lower than anything I have mapped. Still not sure how it turned itself 180 degrees and then took a 90 degree turn and headed out in the grass where it had never snowblowed before, only mowed grass before. Super odd stuff, yarbo software sucks.

I have another one, where it turned off a path and headed snowblowing a path in the rocks around my house, where it is not programmed at all, took a 90 degree left, but I luckily was standing there and stopped it but not before it took out all 4 safety pins in the blower as it rammed my concrete steps.

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Hi Ken, welcome back to the forum, and thank you for sharing such detailed feedback on your snowblower usage.

I’ve checked your support ticket in our system, and we truly appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken to provide additional cases for optimization. These real-world examples are extremely valuable to our team.

Regarding the navigation behavior you mentioned, we currently have an optimization approach in progress. In an upcoming release, we plan to introduce a new decision rule for travel: when multiple navigation options are available, the machine will prioritize traveling through Areas labeled for the module that is currently installed. This enhancement should help resolve several of the scenarios you described and reduce unintended routing.

We look forward to your feedback once this feature is released. Your continued observations and insights are greatly appreciated and play an important role in improving the system.

Thank you again for sharing your experience with us.

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What can you tell us about the targeted timeline for this new release?

In the interim, are there any official workarounds that owners can employ to ensure their Yarbo does not stray into undesired areas and/or cause property damage?

Thanks.

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@rgloverii - Some suggestions have been thrown around in response: delete Pathways and/or Areas; save/restore separate “mower” and “snowblower” maps; use No-go Zones – that type of thing, which involves you modifying your map. All valid, yes. I was trying to set up the map in such a way that it can accommodate the different modules without me doing anything. Sidewalks used as Pathways, for example, will appear only for the snowblower. BUT the snowblower will cut across “mower” Areas and use Pathways I really don’t want it to.

You can block off Pathways using No-go Zones, but the trouble ticket I put in noted that the navigation didn’t allow for that workaround. Navigation would not find the alternate Sidewalks or Pathways I provided, even if I parked the rover right at the start of the alternative – and shorter – route. This is getting fixed. I hope with fixes like that I can massage the map to be OK with the snowblower. Then springtime with the mower? Hmmm…

I clicked LIKE on Yarbo’s response where the visual map filtering that we already have (specifying Areas for specific modules) will start to apply to navigation. I was hoping something like that would have been done at the time of the original filtering implementation, so I’m glad they’re working on finishing up the feature. There are several “mower” Areas I’d like to “turn off” for the snowblower. Then for the mower I’ll turn off the “snowblower” Areas on my driveway. Given how I suspect this would be implemented (I hope I’m right), it’s a set-and-forget. Nice.

All we’re getting here is the garbage snow which no snowblower likes moving around, and I’ll have to say Yarbo did a good job with just a few rescues on my part. This past storm there was about 1.5-2" of packed snow just above the ground, and it was just high enough for the snowblower to high-center on it. Can’t fight Mother Nature. Just drag your robot around, dig out some of the packed snow, and let the bot loose again! LOL!

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I am sorry this is fundamental stuff… Coming up with a work around isn’t helpful.. It just adds to the frustration of users who encounter these types of problems and compounds existing ones.

Why on earth Are you having to Delete pathways and areas When you switch from a mower to a snowblower when you have marked them for that Specific use…

Is it unreasonable to think engineering should have thought about this during design? How many years will it take before fundamental features are complete?

Just about every time I use the device I see more and more fundamental things are are incomplete..

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Exactly, the software sucks…..

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The point in asking @Yarbo-Forum for a timeframe and a workaround is twofold.

1). We need to know how long it will take before the map ‘filtering’ is targeted for implementation.

2). If #1 above is a long timeline (obviously undesired), we owners deserve at least a known to work method of operation that will get us up and running until the proper fix is released.

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IDK about sucks, haven’t seen anything comparable. But it’s definitely only marginally functional.