comments:
I recently bought a robot lawn mower, but before I did, I spent a lot of time researching them. From everything I found, the mowers that use LiDAR plus AI vision seem to have the best navigation, especially if your yard has a lot of tree cover. Mowers that use RTK GPS with AI vision come in second for yards that don't have a lot of tree cover. They also require you to put either a small RTK base station somewhere in your yard that has a clear view of the sky or have them receive RTK correction data over Wi-Fi or a 4G connection. My front yard is clear and flat, but my backyard has a few hills and a large oak tree that covers about half of it. Unfortunately, all of the LiDAR + vision models I looked at were more than I wanted to spend, so I decided to take a chance on an RTK + vision mower instead. I ended up buying an Anthbot M9 about three weeks ago, and I've been really impressed with it. It has two options for receiving RTK correction data. It can either use the base station that comes with it or it can use its built-in 4G connection. If you use the base station, you don't have to use the 4G as long as the mower can connect to your home Wi-Fi from anywhere in the yard. It's good to have though, because if your mower loses the Wi-Fi connection, it will automatically switch over to 4G and keep mowing. It came with 3 months of free 4G service, and if I want to continue it, it's only $35 a year. It occasionally loses GPS lock when it gets close to the large oak tree in my backyard, but the vision system takes over and does a surprisingly good job of keeping it on course. It also has AI object recognition and does a good job avoiding obstacles. Yesterday when it was mowing, it even recognized and drove around a green garden hose that I accidentally left lying in the grass. I went outside and rolled the hose up and the mower came back and mowed where it was lying after it finished the rest of the yard.