Pain in the Grass: Time for a New Robot Mower?
Going All-In on Robot Mowers (Again)
You may remember that we went all in on robots during the Covid lockdown, adding robot mowers to our collection of robot vacuum cleaners. Since then, Hector (who mows the back garden) and Harriet (in the front) have done a great job.
It started as a fun lockdown project — we weren’t sure how well they’d perform — but we’ve been nothing but impressed. They go out on a set schedule several times a day, the lawn is always kept at the perfect length, and for the most part, they’re no trouble at all.
We usually bring them in for the winter, give them a clean, and (if we remember) change their blades. Other than that — and the occasional rescue mission when one of them gets stuck — they quietly get on with it, freeing up time for me to focus on other things (in the garden or elsewhere).
Boundary Woes
However, this year, Hector has been struggling with a few boundary-wire issues. The models we got are fairly basic and rely on a physical boundary wire to define their mowing area — stopping them from wandering off into flower beds, the pond, or down the road.
It’s worked well until now, but I think the wire is starting to degrade and has developed some breaks. They’re easy enough to repair — and replacing sections isn’t too difficult — but finding the break can be frustrating, especially in a large and convoluted garden like ours.
We end up crawling around on hands and knees, digging up wire, using an AM radio or cable-finder to check how far the faint electrical signal travels. It’s an awkward system — and while a clean break is findable, anything more subtle (like a partial break where the plastic coating is intact) becomes almost impossible to track down. We had one such issue at the weekend, and after digging up half the garden without any success, we were facing the prospect of re-laying the entire boundary wire. Not a task we were keen on — especially without adding extra precautions to make the fix more permanent.
Time for an Upgrade?
That said, we’ve definitely had our money’s worth from Hector — so maybe it was time for an upgrade. Newer models don’t need a boundary wire at all. Instead, they use GPS, AI cameras, and advanced software to keep themselves within bounds and avoid mowing through flower beds.
The idea of just leaving the old wire buried and starting afresh was very appealing.
I’ve always been a little sceptical about this type of mower — not entirely convinced that the tech would cope with a garden like ours. It’ll be impressive if it can mow the whole area, get right up to the edges, navigate under overhanging shrubs, and still avoid falling into the pond or getting stuck behind something. There aren’t many delicate plants it could destroy if it went off-piste, but the pond wouldn’t do it much good.
Meet the New Mower
We’ve now ordered one of these newer models – A Mammotion Yuka mini 500 and should have it up and running soon (hopefully before the lawn gets completely out of hand).
The specs promise all sorts of wizardry:
- Advanced AI chips
- UltraSense AL Vision
- L3 autonomous-driving-level computer power
- 5 trillion operations per second
- Centimetre-level accuracy and coverage up to 4 km via Wi-Fi or 4G
- Automatic lawn mapping with no human interaction
- Smart obstacle identification and avoidance
- In-app multi-zone management (up to 15 zones)
- Terrain-floating cutting discs with 5 blades
- Intelligent route-planning for striped, checkerboard, diamond, or even custom ‘lawn art’ patterns
- 24/7 monitoring via the app, complete with live camera feeds
Time will tell how much of that lives up to the hype — and how much of it we’ll actually use. The reviews are encouraging, so we’re cautiously optimistic.
Fingers crossed it’ll prove to be a real upgrade — and not a pain in the grass.
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[…] taken the plunge and upgraded our trusty, boundary-wire-guided Flymo robot mower to a GPS-guided Mammotion Yuka Mini 500, I thought I’d share some first […]
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Sounds a good idea. Renishaw by us have a couple obviously I don’t know which models but their’s seems to do the job, although they have any ponds or other hazards