From left, Segway, Roborock, Dreame, Husqvarna, and Mammotion automowers lined up to do battle with my lawn. | Photo: Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge Robot lawnmowers are finally good enough to take a lot of work out of maintaining a yard, but they’re still not set-it-and-forget-it machines.
If you don’t want these autonomous cutting machines to tear up your lawn or go roaming in your neighbors’ yard, you’re still going to need to keep an eye on them.
But with some oversight, they can take a big chore off your hands.
This summer I tested five bots on my flat, three-quarter-acre, coastal South Carolina property with sandy soil, centipede grass, and lots of trees.
Things went much better than last year’s trials and tribulations, thanks to huge improvements in navigation and maneuverability.
Basically, they stopped getting stuck.
My lawn has never looked better, and my spouse — who had sworn off robot lawnmowers after a user-error injury — is now a convert.
His riding lawnmower has been idle for over a month.
The consistency of robot mowers is impressive.
Running daily and shaving just millimeters at a time, these mowers have created a noticeably lusher lawn.
I walked out on it barefoot this morning — something I’ve never done before.
The best part is that they work quietly around the clock, without bothering my pets, the wildlife, or the neighbors.
I also love the professional-looking lawn lines they make.
What’s better The key upgrades this year are network RTK navigation, fallback navigation systems, and improved all-wheel-drive to tackle rougher terrain.
RTK — real-time kinematic positioning — is the satellite positioning tech most automowers switched to over the last few years as they’ve ditched boundary wires.
It uses stationary ground-based reference stations (antennas), along with GPS, to provide very precise location data, down to a centimeter or two.
Its used for surveying, drone navigation, and anything that needs that fine level of precision.
Every mower I tested, apart from the Lidar-based Dreame, comes with its own RTK antenna that needs to be installed in your yard with a clear view of the sky; trees, a neighbor’s house, or your own roofline can all block the signal.
In my previous testing, I didn’t get a single RTK mower to run successfully in my backyard, where I have very spotty GPS coverage.
This new crop all now offers NetRTK as an option.
This taps into a network of existing RTK reference stations through a cloud connection, and requires a Wi-Fi or 4G connection on the mower.
Most worked out of the box without me needing to install the antenna, but you’ll need to check if your house is covered, as coverage varies.
RTK mowers now also use a secondary navigation tech such as lidar or vSLAM to keep on track when the signal drops.
This improvement in navigation, plus bigger, more capable machines, meant I no longer spent my summer dragging confused mowers out from under oak trees.
What still needs work However, automowers are far from perfect.
These are autonomous machines with blades, and leaving them to their own devices comes with risks.
One spent three days methodically destroying a patch of my lawn before I noticed.
Another took out two outdoor extension cords.
Several models dug sandpits in bare patches, and another tried to climb up a small tree.
Obstacle detection is better across the board, but it still has a long way to go.
Hoses, cables, and cars are still a challenge — my family now knows to check under the wheels before driving away.
No one has really solved gates yet, either (although they’re trying) — I still have to manually open mine to let the robot mow the full property.
And, while every manufacturer currently advertises NetRTK coverage as free for the lifetime of the device, there are obvious downsides to relying on a cloud service to mow your lawn.
Finally, automowers are still expensive, and I have concerns around long-term durability.
Like their siblings, robot vacuums, there are myriad