8 ms·

OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

609 points by rickcarlino 1y ago

sema4hacker 1y ago
>I'm on the lookout for new challenges. Please mod your mower to automatically pick up litter along road edges, and sell it to Caltrans at dot.ca.gov
WalterBright 1y ago
My dad's solution was simple: "Mow the lawn!" directed at me.
- WillAdams 1y ago
  My solution has been even simpler --- I just use a reel mower (on an admittedly small lawn, ~1/3rd of an acre) --- it's a decent workout, esp. when I strive to finish quickly. (the one time I asked my son to cut the grass he broke the reel mower)
  - conductr 1y ago
    I made another comment about it but consider adding a drivetrain. My v1 was RC but then I added lidar when I got tired of driving it by controller.
    - WillAdams 1y ago
      If it becomes easier to do, then I get less exercise --- getting the Fiskars w/ the chain drive gearing was as much reduction as I can justify.
      - conductr 1y ago
        Gotcha. I’m optimizing for least calories expended ;D
  - lm28469 1y ago
    I'm on the scythe team, it's quite relaxing and a good workout, 0 noise, almost no insect/animals killed. Sure it's slow, but you can skip the gym for a few days after mowing, it hits my abs harder than 200kg dealifts or a day of rock climbing. < $100 for a top of the line that will serve you, your kids and their kids
    - WillAdams 1y ago
      Respect! (I used a scythe when I was much younger for haying on the less than 5 acres my father owned and _that_ was a workout) There is the steeply angled bank mentioned elsethread which I arguably should cut thus... maybe next year.
  - Finnucane 1y ago
    Another reel mower user here. But our, uh, lawn, I guess you'd call it, has maybe 300 sq. ft of grass. Well, mostly grass. There's other stuff in there that I'm pretty sure is not grass? Come to think of it, 'mostly' grass at this point is a bit of an exaggeration. Also, in the spring violets. Which I leave for the bees until June. Rabbits come and help out too.
    - WillAdams 1y ago
      When I was a kid, mowing my father's lawn w/ a riding mower, I always detoured around the violets in the spring... these days, I will usually dig up and transplant any volunteers from the yard to the nearest suitable garden bed with open space.
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        I've had quail nesting in my yard. I didn't bother them with the mower until the chicks matured and left.
  - uticus 1y ago
    Reel mowers are also nicer for allergy sufferers - no dust etc thrown up in the air, no gasoline exhaust. Not to mention fairly quiet. Obvious downsides are can't cope with some species (too low to ground, etc) or with sticks etc if near a wooded area.
- mordae 1y ago
  That's why I moved out.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    LOL. I remember the day I phoned my dad and told him he didn't need to send me checks anymore (I was a student in college). Our relationship shifted overnight - he then treated me as a man rather than as a child.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
pabs3 1y ago
> Open Source The CC-NC-SA-4.0 license isn't an Open Source Definition compliant license, since it discriminates against a field of use (commercial applications). https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/blob/main/LICENS... https://opensourcedefinition.org/ https://opensourcedefinition.org/ A reminder, open source means surrendering your monopoly over commercial exploitation: https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your-monopoly.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your...
- OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
  It's worth noting that the project is CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 however it comes with a notice that other licenses are available if you content them directly. So it may not be open source under the strict definition however the project is also not staunchly anti-commercial. > Feel free to use the design in your private/educational projects, but don't try to sell the design or products based on it without getting my consent first. The idea here is to share knowledge, not to enable others to simply sell my work. Thank you for understanding.
  - lambda 1y ago
    It's simply not open source. It doesn't meet the definition. It's co-opting the term to call it open source. This has been debated and settled. What people mean by open source or free software has a well agreed upon definition, and this isn't it.
    - echelon 1y ago
      Open source has been turned against us and used to build hyperscalers that effectively control modern computing. Pure open source is also not a sustainable business model. You have to be open core or non-commercial, otherwise anyone and everyone can steal your lunch. You're asking for the right to compete when they've given you every other single right there is. That's just not nice.
      - 1y ago
DonHopkins 1y ago
Two discussions about Larry Ellison battling it out for 14th and 15th place: 14. An IRC-Enabled Lawn Mower (idlerpg.net) 15. OpenMower – An Open Source Lawn Mower (github.com/clemenselflein)
- sitkack 1y ago
  You wouldn't anthropomorphize a lawn mower would you?
  - littlestymaar 1y ago
    Unexpected bcantrill.
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    Mowagotchi!
aaron695 1y ago
Here's what robotic mowers blades look like to understand how they work - https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/676d76e61268a410caaecfcb/1737216881609-4MH44TMJXKLK1W6QWQYE/feature-sunseeker-floating-cut-deck.png?format=750w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/676d76e61268a4... We just got a Sunseeker X7 to do ~4 acres of grassed area but probably ~2 acres will be garden beds and roads etc The hardware is there, it's all software now. People talk about updates and the robot improved amazingly, comments like - "these scuffs are from pre-update" These are Elon's updateable cars, they will get better with time. (Sunseeker is also camera not yet LiDAR) Robotic mowers are better than humans, there are a few if's and buts, grass nerds compare the cuts on a grass blade on YouTube for instance. With a robot you can set blade lengths for areas and be seasonal/weather orientated. The constant cuttings mean the nutrients get shredded back in. The Chinese seem to be the best... but that might have been my price bracket. Obviously since you can run them at night at 3am you quickly see other uses like security/wildlife auditing. Exciting times to live in.
- fy20 1y ago
  The price still needs to come down for what is effectively a slightly more rugged robot vaccuum. I could buy a used car for that, and have enough left over to make it run reliably. The quality of cheaper models is not great. I bought two from Einhell (power tool brand like DeWalt in Europe) and they both had to be returned due to motor failures. A replacement motor was €150 - for a €400 robot without battery (it uses their 18V tool batteries which is what appealed to me - easy replacement).
  - bmicraft 1y ago
    The thing is, they are more than a robot vacuum. They need to be able to: - deal with rougher, bumpier terrain (friction!) - do so uphill through uncut grass - not stall the mowing motor with high grass - cover a larger area - be waterproof against rain All of these points need a lot more power individually, and especially so when taken together (and carrying the weight increase of all those upgrades). It seems reasonable they'd cost at least twice as much for "similar" feature/budget levels. And I think that's pretty much what we're seeing.
jshchnz 1y ago
this is cool
paffdragon 1y ago
When I read the title I remembered how people in the 90s at my place built their lawn mowers. It was a new thing. My father welded the frame from scrap metal with the motor from a washing machine and some tiny wheels from an old baby stroller lol. It was kind of open source, many people copied or he helped build one. Haha, served us surprisingly well for a time :)
- jabl 1y ago
  My uncle used a semi-DIY lawn mower for many years where he had replaced the original broken engine with an old electric drill. Worked fine enough.
aidenn0 1y ago
So this includes a CC licensed RTK base and remote? That's pretty cool.
Daub 1y ago
Some titles I upvote without first following the link.
- mdaniel 1y ago
  I'm conceptually with you, just watch out because there's become a real plague of things calling themselves "open source $foo" that are not. I don't mean this submission, I mean just in general there have been quite a lot
conductr 1y ago
This is a fun project to take on. Couple years ago I built an autonomous controlled chassis onto a push reel mower (removed handles of course). It’s not as safe as the typical robot mower given they use tiny blades to trim (and reel mower will take a finger) but it’s relatively low maintenance since the blades need replacing every month or so. I opted for lidar as the reviews on RTK GPS seem pretty hit or miss and didn’t want the base antenna thingy. It works well for me and the cut quality is amazing even just running once a week.
- skewbone 1y ago
  Would you mind sharing any pictures or video about the mower? I converted my push reel to electric without a kit, and have been considering putting separate high torque, low speed motors for drive wheel control to start moving towards autonomous cutting. Would be great to see your experience!
  - conductr 1y ago
    I made it for my country home and won’t be there for a bit but maybe one day I’ll document it. But the parts store I used closed down, Open Builds Part Store. It’s nothing proprietary to them, I just got all the v slot aluminum frame and connectors there to build the chassis. Then I got hub motor wheels on Amazon or Aliexpress and batteries too. Most small components I get on Amazon, motor controller. I went with off-road air filled tires. And I wrote all then logic into an arduino mega. Oh and I used an upside down rubber made container as the case for electronics. Everything is mounted to the bottom of the lid and the box part is functionally the lid that I remove to gain access. It as built in snap locks and I used weather stripping to make the seal tight. You just have to figure out how to mount to the lawn mower part of your choice, after than it’s the same as building any vehicle.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
      > after than it’s the same as building any vehicle LOL. Love this line ;-)
blincoln 1y ago
This is really neat, but it seems like the one supported mower isn't officially available in North America. Has anyone here made this project work with a mower that's easily available here?
- luma 1y ago
  I had posted this several years back trying to figure out options in NA without much luck: https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/issues/8 https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/issues/8 Sounds like the hardware platform isn't available anywhere at all now.
- jeremysalwen 1y ago
  There are a number of supported mowers now, including ones sold in the USA, and the number will increase with the upcoming V2 board! Really all the activity is on the discord server -- the GitHub projects are secondary so it can seem much less active (and information is less up to date) if you look there
deckar01 1y ago
I have been dreaming of small solar robots that quietly trim the grass all day. Static blades pulled across the grass in short bursts. RC orchestration guided by security cameras.
- nunez 1y ago
  If that is your dream, then have you considered replacing grass with turf? No growth to worry about!
- deadbabe 1y ago
  You cannot just trim grass all day unless you want a terrible lawn. You need to cut at the right hours.
  - deckar01 1y ago
    I’m not sure what your criteria is, but mine is to keep the grass alive and provide root structure for my soil.
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      Aesthetics matter.
      - kylegordon 1y ago
        With such sweeping statements, it clearly matters to you. However, time matters to me. Others are entitled to have different priorities from you. My Luba 2 has saved me 3 weeks of manual mowing over the past year and my lawn has never looked better. Frequently complemented by others. It's just a lawn and a lawnmower. I'm not playing keeping up with the jones, hoa bullshit or whatever other nonsense Americans invent. It's just a Scottish garden for the wildlife to roam in.
      - PunchyHamster 1y ago
        square of grass is one of most boring things you can do aescethically with lawn
IgorPartola 1y ago
I was hoping this was more of a hardware project as in building the physical mower from scratch. I am not quite sold on the robotic mowers but the quality and market for riding mowers is insane right now. I own two riding mowers and both are completely dead. One needs a rather expensive wiring harness so they it would stop catching fire when it runs. The other has the most common single cylinder engine that comes in all the mowers in the past like 30 years and it’s a terrible design that grenades itself 1-4 times a year. And the prices of these new and used are out of this world even compared to baseline inflation. I decided to strip one of them and convert it to full electric using salvaged electric motors from Ryobi mowers and Amazon controllers. I have seen a few videos of this conversion and I do like the logic of having one motor for the drive wheels and one per blade rather than messing with fancy belts and pulleys and idlers and clutches. A really interesting part of this kind of build is that I can reuse Ryobi’s 40V batteries so I don’t need to design and build a custom battery + BMS + charging system. Just buy and wire enough connectors to run everything. And that’s where it would be really cool to see a properly engineered project around doing something like that. I see a lot of potential here since you can get these motors for roughly $50 shipped on eBay and a controller would be about as much.
- aaron695 1y ago
  [dead]
- vdupras 1y ago
  > And the prices of these new and used are out of this world even compared to baseline inflation. How many such cases do we need to have to be able to put out the hypothesis that the baseline inflation figures we're being fed are wrong?
  - Mumps 1y ago
    If the poster is in the USA couldn't it be explained by Trump Tariffs (in addition to inflation)
    - IgorPartola 1y ago
ornel 1y ago
Lawn mowing seems like such a useless thing. I mean domestic lawns themselves, especially in a crisis of biodiversity loss, are such a waste of possibility. I had to stop the video when I saw the mower was going for a patch of clovers, thus reducing plant diversity to a single boring, useless species
- woodpanel 1y ago
  „biodiversity“ as in „just let the place rot and get covered by weeds until trees and over stuff planted by you collapse due to the massive-and-aggressiveness of pests and pesty weeds.
  - blitzar 1y ago
    „biodiversity“ as in a mix of roads, gutters and cars. There was a suggestion of introducing some footpaths to the mix but there was concern it was too much diversity.
  - r14c 1y ago
    a lot of folks don't understand permaculture when they first dive into it and end up in a bad situation. cultivating a pleasing ecosystem is both complicated a lot of work to get right, but eventually it can mostly take care of itself. sadly, traditional gardening doesn't really teach you how to maintain plants in concert or how to passively repel pests. it can be pretty rewarding to learn though if you don't mind getting into the science of it.
  - smohare 1y ago
    [dead]
- jabl 1y ago
  Indeed. Sure, lawns do have their place, like for playing sports or for kids to play around. But otherwise, what a waste. Just plant some local flowers or whatever and have a meadow. As an example, at some point my father stopped bothering to mow his lawn all the time (basically only once per year). It's now a nice meadow with all kinds of grasses. Frogs, butterflies, dragonflies, bees like it. An additional issue with robotic mowers is that they tend to kill hedgehogs.
tauntz 1y ago
I dream of a day when my Mammotion Luba gets some decent working software. The HW is stellar, the SF is EXTREMELY bad :/
- szundi 1y ago
  [dead]
- NiekvdMaas 1y ago
  Agreed, the Mammotion hardware is amazing - the app is horrible. An open API would solve this as well, but there's little chance with the Chinese owners.
davenewton 1y ago
Very cool project, but CC-BY-NC-SA is "source available", not opensource :-(
- Meneth 1y ago
  Looks like the software project ( https://github.com/ClemensElflein/open_mower_ros https://github.com/ClemensElflein/open_mower_ros ) uses GPL-3.0.
jeremysalwen 1y ago
I run an Open mower on my 1400 square meter lawn in the USA. AMA. (ps. If you are interested make sure to go to the discord instead of just reading the docs or GitHub pages -- that is where all the activity is!)
- napo 1y ago
  Nice! How much time did it take you from the moment you started the project to the point where it fell like it was up & running?
  - jeremysalwen 1y ago
    It's hard to put a specific number on it, since it's been progressively improving the whole time I had it. I bought it in the fall of 2023, and got it "running" then, but it was not actually doing any useful work. Summer of 2024 it was doing useful work but required constant hand holding and a series of hardware and software upgrades to get it more stable. This year it is actually doing the majority of the mowing. It still requires frequent rescue but it's a lot less work than actually mowing the lawn myself. However my lawn is probably the most difficult lawn of any openmower user. I'm in Vermont, so I have very steep terrain, a bumpy yard, poor GPS reception, very wet weather, and also my lawn is very large and complex shaped. For a simple use case it would be working great a long time ago. I also chose to do a "Mowgli" build which is based on more reverse engineering, which added complexity and unreliability (but saved some money).
- zeroping 1y ago
  How difficult was it to get the needed hardware in the US? It seems hard or expensive to do so.
  - jeremysalwen 1y ago
    The yardforce500 is hard to find in the USA, but it's extremely cheap in Europe. I found a great deal and paid $208 for the mower and $135 for a package forwarder to ship it from Germany. I have a complete spreadsheet of my expenses here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BV8VCtqTer8iodXvyRd1aD0JH9nw67cjAnnOCCMXArY/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BV8VCtqTer8iodXvyRd1...
lionkor 1y ago
CC-BY-SA 4.0 is an interesting choice. I know this isn't a ShowHN, but was this chosen because it's copyleft, but hardware?
- jeremysalwen 1y ago
  The hardware+software used to both be under that same non commercial cc license, but there was recently a relicense of the software to GPL3. I think the goal is to just prevent someone else from profiting off of Clemens's work without him (while still allowing community use).
  - pabs3 1y ago
    The GPLv3 does allow profiting off his work though, so that might not be the best choice of license. Especially since hardware vendors often deliberately don't comply with the GPL, and the only recourse is an expensive lawsuit.
    - swores 1y ago
      > "hardware vendors often deliberately don't comply with the GPL, and the only recourse is an expensive lawsuit." Isn't that unrelated to exact license choice, and going to be the case with any software that's wants to be open source but not allow commercial use? There's no license or wording in a license that can change the fact that, if you let people get the source for non-commercial use, there's nothing except the threat of lawsuits to stop anyone from ignoring the license and using it commercially.
      - pabs3 1y ago
        Thats going to be the case with almost any license, people even violate the MIT/BSD licenses. One possible exception is CC0, since it has no conditions.
PeterStuer 1y ago
I used to research autonomous vehicles long time ago. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to do a true random walk in a real physical environment due to all the inherent physical bias and implicit steering that results from the terrain.
boomskats 1y ago
So is this like Valetudo[0] but for mowers? Very cool! I wonder how much overlap / shared code there is between robot vacuums and robot mowers. [0]: https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/
- aswegs8 1y ago
  Thanks for the link, this is super useful. I will probably use both valetudo and openmower soon! Is there anything comparable for security cameras?
  - jonah 1y ago
    Camera firmware: https://thingino.com https://thingino.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44791984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44791984 https://openipc.org https://openipc.org https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758463 NVR: https://frigate.video https://frigate.video https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794508
  - all2 1y ago
    > Is there anything comparable for security cameras? ReoLink + Frigate. [0] https://frigate.video/ https://frigate.video/
- lxn 1y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this. I did not know it existed, and it looks very interesting. I might try to "upgrade" my 7-year-old vacuum robot.
- cuu508 1y ago
  Unlike Valetudo, this uses the chassis and the motor of the lawn mower, but completely replaces electronics.
  - reitanuki 1y ago
    The Mowgli project is reusing the mainboard of the original lawnmower (might be enhanced with a RPi though). It's not currently as well-baked (or at least, well-trodden) as the default OpenMower approach which does indeed involve ripping out the mainboard and replacing it.
firemelt 1y ago
I wonder how these guys know how install the new os or bypass the os that come with the bot
- drzaiusx11 1y ago
  They don't, it's a mainboard replacement project
coryodaniel 1y ago
One of my neighbors has a fleet of solar-powered, zero-emission, self-fertilizing, biodiversity-boosting autonomous lawn-care bots. He calls them tortoises.
j45 1y ago
It’s too bad this mower doesn’t appear readily available in North America.
micheljansen 1y ago
"Let's be honest: The current generation of robotic lawn mowers sucks. Basically all of these bots drive in a random direction until they hit the border of the lawn, rotate for a randomized duration and repeat. I think we can do better!" The funny thing is: this actually works incredibly well. Perimeter wires are a PITA to install, but once that's done, they are a very practical and flawless method for making sure the robot does not escape into the neighbour's yard or worse. The random movement is really effective too. What exactly can a smart robot do better? Removing the need for perimeter wires would be great, as long as it works 100% flawlessly. Obstacle detection would also be nice, so I can avoid my mower chewing up the toys my kid sometimes leaves lying around (though it is a great motivation to clean up!)
- foobarian 1y ago
  Regardless of how good the perimeter wire bots are, it's also not true that the more advanced generation "sucks." I have one and it works perfectly fine (Mammotion Luba 2). The hardware is great, positioning is great; there is always stuff to nitpick on the software side but at the end of the day that's great as well.
- razemio 1y ago
  I have a Mammotion Yuba and trust me, the grass looks awesome as a grid or in lines. It can even do logos. So far nicer looking grass and much faster then random.
  - ai-christianson 1y ago
    I have a mix of older automowers (e.g. 315x) and newer bots like navimow x330. The navimow does "mini stripes" and they do look nice, but the grass tends to look a little more "carpet" like with the automower randomized pattern.
- zamadatix 1y ago
  It looks like obstacle avoidance is the key thing remaining in the software todos. For positioning it seems you get your pick of RTK GPS sensors, so it'd be interesting to still support guide wires for "escape protection".
cronelius 1y ago
i’m gonna anthropomorphize it
albertzeyer 1y ago
> The current generation of robotic lawn mowers sucks. Basically all of these bots drive in a random direction until they hit the border of the lawn, rotate for a randomized duration and repeat. I recently (a few weeks ago) bought one. While researching on the available options (which seemed relevant to me), actually almost none of the robots work this way. Most of them systematically go through the lawn. I think from those that I checked, only the Worx Landroid does it randomly. I was searching for some model which works without wires, because I was too lazy to set this up. Basically, in general, I wanted sth which required as little effort as possible. I decided for eufy E15, which uses camera (no GPS, no wires, no lidar, nothing else really). And it just seems to work. It creates a map first, and then systematically goes over the lawn. I didn't really need to do anything. (I'm not affiliated with eufy in any way. I'm just quite happy with it so far.) That said, obviously, having an open source variant of such a robot would be even nicer (if it works)! So I'm quite happy to see such a project. This robot here uses GPS, as far as I can see, as the sole technique for navigation and localization. From reports that I have read, GPS mostly works fine, except for some cases where it does not (where GPS coverage is not great). Camera on the other side always works (during daytime). Maybe this could be added to this project? Of course, using the camera is probably quite a bit more complicated, and more prone to errors, but overall might be more robust and reliable.
- codegeek 1y ago
  How large is your lawn and is it mostly flat ? I want to try one for my lawn but I have very large lawn and one side is slopy/steep.
  - albertzeyer 1y ago
    Maybe 300 m^2 or so. The eufy E15 is for up to 800 m^2. There is the eufy E18 for up to 1200 m^2. I have seen other (more expensive, bigger) robots for much larger lawns. My garden is relatively flat with a few bumps here and there. You can also easily mark some areas of the lawn as always excluded so that it wont drive there.
- goda90 1y ago
  Maybe instead of GPS or camera, it could have a local positioning system instead. 3 small, solar powered beacons can be installed around the yard to be mowed.
uticus 1y ago
A compromise solution that cuts way down on complexity is remote controlled. Any suggestions for similar projects but RC instead of autonomous?
- goda90 1y ago
  Hook it up to the Internet and get the top Lawn Mowing Simulator players to do it for free.
  - Corrado 1y ago
    Ender’s Game for lawnmowers
bob1029 1y ago
I really like the software & systems aspects of this, but I don't understand how homeowners are making the hardware work in non-ideal situations. It would have to be constantly mowing my lawn in Texas or it would be at risk of trapping itself in a jungle. There is no way a robot mower could deal with 10+ days of growth in the summer. I can stall a 7hp+ 22" mower at practically any speed if I try to cut a full width strip in these conditions.
- R0flcopt3r 1y ago
  It _is_ supposed to run constantly.
- SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
  Yes that is exactly it. It mows every day or a couple days. The blades on these look about razor blade size. If you don’t mow for a week you would need to hit it with a real mower.
- dpoloncsak 1y ago
  Like auto-vacuums changed user-habits from vacuuming one a week to running the machine daily, so too will auto-lawn mowers.
6stringmerc 1y ago
Can the liability for damage to property or persons also be open sourced in the United States in case one of these things throws a rock and breaks a window or runs over an errant French Bulldog in spite of it "not supposed to be there in the first place" parameters? If you think I'm kidding, I'm in Texas. If robotic mowing was in any way shape or form viable, it would be at an Enterprise Level here. IT IS NOT. Fields still take tractors and industrial level maintenance to avoid creating a public liability, aka, fire hazard. All these projects do in the short term is devalue the human who would otherwise be the one mowing the yard. Want to impress me? Create a mobile Open Source AI / Tech powered MOBILE DENTISTRY SYSTEM that fits in a MB Sprinter Van and can come to communities and provide services at scale. My bad. I almost forgot solving problems is secondary to drumming up bullshit narratives to get funding.
- wing-_-nuts 1y ago
  >Can the liability for damage to property or persons also be open sourced in the United States in case one of these things throws a rock and breaks a window or runs over an errant French Bulldog in spite of it "not supposed to be there in the first place" parameters? Man, between you and the hedgehog guy, y'all are hilarious. Yeah, if it throws a rock, you're liable for it. If it runs over a dog, that dog was already dead. Are you aware of how slowly these things move? I'll also chime in 'it's not supposed to be in my yard'. >All these projects do in the short term is devalue the human who would otherwise be the one mowing the yard. Funny how we all recognize AI in other domains frees up labor to work on more important things. I'm sure landscapers would love this.
pabs3 1y ago
Might be best to not mow that lawn, think of the bees instead. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320717306201 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...
objcts 1y ago
i have a mammotion luba 2 AWD and it's saved me days this summer! so much more time to spend with the kids and less time sweating. i've had it running since May and it's been amazing so far. i hope it can continue going strong and that the product ecosystem around it continues to improve. if it falls apart, i dunno if i can go back to mowing the lawn without a robot. i recently wrote a review of my experience here: https://mfelix.org/reviews/mammotion-luba2/ https://mfelix.org/reviews/mammotion-luba2/ it's not hard to see how given enough time, these things will completely replace a whole sector of human labor. why pay someone hundreds of dollars a month (or do the work yourself) when the robotic options are good enough?
Sibinarendran 1y ago
looks cool, how to buy one?

609 points by rickcarlino 1y ago

>I'm on the lookout for new challenges. Please mod your mower to automatically pick up litter along road edges, and sell it to Caltrans at dot.ca.gov

WalterBright 1y ago

My dad's solution was simple: "Mow the lawn!" directed at me.

WillAdams 1y ago
My solution has been even simpler --- I just use a reel mower (on an admittedly small lawn, ~1/3rd of an acre) --- it's a decent workout, esp. when I strive to finish quickly. (the one time I asked my son to cut the grass he broke the reel mower)
- conductr 1y ago
  I made another comment about it but consider adding a drivetrain. My v1 was RC but then I added lidar when I got tired of driving it by controller.
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    If it becomes easier to do, then I get less exercise --- getting the Fiskars w/ the chain drive gearing was as much reduction as I can justify.
    - conductr 1y ago
      Gotcha. I’m optimizing for least calories expended ;D
- lm28469 1y ago
  I'm on the scythe team, it's quite relaxing and a good workout, 0 noise, almost no insect/animals killed. Sure it's slow, but you can skip the gym for a few days after mowing, it hits my abs harder than 200kg dealifts or a day of rock climbing. < $100 for a top of the line that will serve you, your kids and their kids
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    Respect! (I used a scythe when I was much younger for haying on the less than 5 acres my father owned and _that_ was a workout) There is the steeply angled bank mentioned elsethread which I arguably should cut thus... maybe next year.
- Finnucane 1y ago
  Another reel mower user here. But our, uh, lawn, I guess you'd call it, has maybe 300 sq. ft of grass. Well, mostly grass. There's other stuff in there that I'm pretty sure is not grass? Come to think of it, 'mostly' grass at this point is a bit of an exaggeration. Also, in the spring violets. Which I leave for the bees until June. Rabbits come and help out too.
  - WillAdams 1y ago
    When I was a kid, mowing my father's lawn w/ a riding mower, I always detoured around the violets in the spring... these days, I will usually dig up and transplant any volunteers from the yard to the nearest suitable garden bed with open space.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      I've had quail nesting in my yard. I didn't bother them with the mower until the chicks matured and left.
- uticus 1y ago
  Reel mowers are also nicer for allergy sufferers - no dust etc thrown up in the air, no gasoline exhaust. Not to mention fairly quiet. Obvious downsides are can't cope with some species (too low to ground, etc) or with sticks etc if near a wooded area.
mordae 1y ago
That's why I moved out.
- WalterBright 1y ago
  LOL. I remember the day I phoned my dad and told him he didn't need to send me checks anymore (I was a student in college). Our relationship shifted overnight - he then treated me as a man rather than as a child.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

pabs3 1y ago

> Open Source The CC-NC-SA-4.0 license isn't an Open Source Definition compliant license, since it discriminates against a field of use (commercial applications). https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/blob/main/LICENSE https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/blob/main/LICENS... https://opensourcedefinition.org/ https://opensourcedefinition.org/ A reminder, open source means surrendering your monopoly over commercial exploitation: https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your-monopoly.html https://drewdevault.com/2021/01/20/FOSS-is-to-surrender-your...

OneDeuxTriSeiGo 1y ago
It's worth noting that the project is CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0 however it comes with a notice that other licenses are available if you content them directly. So it may not be open source under the strict definition however the project is also not staunchly anti-commercial. > Feel free to use the design in your private/educational projects, but don't try to sell the design or products based on it without getting my consent first. The idea here is to share knowledge, not to enable others to simply sell my work. Thank you for understanding.
- lambda 1y ago
  It's simply not open source. It doesn't meet the definition. It's co-opting the term to call it open source. This has been debated and settled. What people mean by open source or free software has a well agreed upon definition, and this isn't it.
  - echelon 1y ago
    Open source has been turned against us and used to build hyperscalers that effectively control modern computing. Pure open source is also not a sustainable business model. You have to be open core or non-commercial, otherwise anyone and everyone can steal your lunch. You're asking for the right to compete when they've given you every other single right there is. That's just not nice.
    - 1y ago

DonHopkins 1y ago

Two discussions about Larry Ellison battling it out for 14th and 15th place: 14. An IRC-Enabled Lawn Mower (idlerpg.net) 15. OpenMower – An Open Source Lawn Mower (github.com/clemenselflein)

sitkack 1y ago
You wouldn't anthropomorphize a lawn mower would you?
- littlestymaar 1y ago
  Unexpected bcantrill.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  Mowagotchi!

aaron695 1y ago

Here's what robotic mowers blades look like to understand how they work - https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/676d76e61268a410caaecfcb/1737216881609-4MH44TMJXKLK1W6QWQYE/feature-sunseeker-floating-cut-deck.png?format=750w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/676d76e61268a4... We just got a Sunseeker X7 to do ~4 acres of grassed area but probably ~2 acres will be garden beds and roads etc The hardware is there, it's all software now. People talk about updates and the robot improved amazingly, comments like - "these scuffs are from pre-update" These are Elon's updateable cars, they will get better with time. (Sunseeker is also camera not yet LiDAR) Robotic mowers are better than humans, there are a few if's and buts, grass nerds compare the cuts on a grass blade on YouTube for instance. With a robot you can set blade lengths for areas and be seasonal/weather orientated. The constant cuttings mean the nutrients get shredded back in. The Chinese seem to be the best... but that might have been my price bracket. Obviously since you can run them at night at 3am you quickly see other uses like security/wildlife auditing. Exciting times to live in.

fy20 1y ago
The price still needs to come down for what is effectively a slightly more rugged robot vaccuum. I could buy a used car for that, and have enough left over to make it run reliably. The quality of cheaper models is not great. I bought two from Einhell (power tool brand like DeWalt in Europe) and they both had to be returned due to motor failures. A replacement motor was €150 - for a €400 robot without battery (it uses their 18V tool batteries which is what appealed to me - easy replacement).
- bmicraft 1y ago
  The thing is, they are more than a robot vacuum. They need to be able to: - deal with rougher, bumpier terrain (friction!) - do so uphill through uncut grass - not stall the mowing motor with high grass - cover a larger area - be waterproof against rain All of these points need a lot more power individually, and especially so when taken together (and carrying the weight increase of all those upgrades). It seems reasonable they'd cost at least twice as much for "similar" feature/budget levels. And I think that's pretty much what we're seeing.

jshchnz 1y ago

this is cool

paffdragon 1y ago

When I read the title I remembered how people in the 90s at my place built their lawn mowers. It was a new thing. My father welded the frame from scrap metal with the motor from a washing machine and some tiny wheels from an old baby stroller lol. It was kind of open source, many people copied or he helped build one. Haha, served us surprisingly well for a time :)

jabl 1y ago
My uncle used a semi-DIY lawn mower for many years where he had replaced the original broken engine with an old electric drill. Worked fine enough.

aidenn0 1y ago

So this includes a CC licensed RTK base and remote? That's pretty cool.

Daub 1y ago

Some titles I upvote without first following the link.

mdaniel 1y ago
I'm conceptually with you, just watch out because there's become a real plague of things calling themselves "open source $foo" that are not. I don't mean this submission, I mean just in general there have been quite a lot

conductr 1y ago

This is a fun project to take on. Couple years ago I built an autonomous controlled chassis onto a push reel mower (removed handles of course). It’s not as safe as the typical robot mower given they use tiny blades to trim (and reel mower will take a finger) but it’s relatively low maintenance since the blades need replacing every month or so. I opted for lidar as the reviews on RTK GPS seem pretty hit or miss and didn’t want the base antenna thingy. It works well for me and the cut quality is amazing even just running once a week.

skewbone 1y ago
Would you mind sharing any pictures or video about the mower? I converted my push reel to electric without a kit, and have been considering putting separate high torque, low speed motors for drive wheel control to start moving towards autonomous cutting. Would be great to see your experience!
- conductr 1y ago
  I made it for my country home and won’t be there for a bit but maybe one day I’ll document it. But the parts store I used closed down, Open Builds Part Store. It’s nothing proprietary to them, I just got all the v slot aluminum frame and connectors there to build the chassis. Then I got hub motor wheels on Amazon or Aliexpress and batteries too. Most small components I get on Amazon, motor controller. I went with off-road air filled tires. And I wrote all then logic into an arduino mega. Oh and I used an upside down rubber made container as the case for electronics. Everything is mounted to the bottom of the lid and the box part is functionally the lid that I remove to gain access. It as built in snap locks and I used weather stripping to make the seal tight. You just have to figure out how to mount to the lawn mower part of your choice, after than it’s the same as building any vehicle.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
    > after than it’s the same as building any vehicle LOL. Love this line ;-)

blincoln 1y ago

This is really neat, but it seems like the one supported mower isn't officially available in North America. Has anyone here made this project work with a mower that's easily available here?

luma 1y ago
I had posted this several years back trying to figure out options in NA without much luck: https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/issues/8 https://github.com/ClemensElflein/OpenMower/issues/8 Sounds like the hardware platform isn't available anywhere at all now.
jeremysalwen 1y ago
There are a number of supported mowers now, including ones sold in the USA, and the number will increase with the upcoming V2 board! Really all the activity is on the discord server -- the GitHub projects are secondary so it can seem much less active (and information is less up to date) if you look there

deckar01 1y ago

I have been dreaming of small solar robots that quietly trim the grass all day. Static blades pulled across the grass in short bursts. RC orchestration guided by security cameras.

nunez 1y ago
If that is your dream, then have you considered replacing grass with turf? No growth to worry about!
deadbabe 1y ago
You cannot just trim grass all day unless you want a terrible lawn. You need to cut at the right hours.
- deckar01 1y ago
  I’m not sure what your criteria is, but mine is to keep the grass alive and provide root structure for my soil.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    Aesthetics matter.
    - kylegordon 1y ago
      With such sweeping statements, it clearly matters to you. However, time matters to me. Others are entitled to have different priorities from you. My Luba 2 has saved me 3 weeks of manual mowing over the past year and my lawn has never looked better. Frequently complemented by others. It's just a lawn and a lawnmower. I'm not playing keeping up with the jones, hoa bullshit or whatever other nonsense Americans invent. It's just a Scottish garden for the wildlife to roam in.
    - PunchyHamster 1y ago
      square of grass is one of most boring things you can do aescethically with lawn

IgorPartola 1y ago

I was hoping this was more of a hardware project as in building the physical mower from scratch. I am not quite sold on the robotic mowers but the quality and market for riding mowers is insane right now. I own two riding mowers and both are completely dead. One needs a rather expensive wiring harness so they it would stop catching fire when it runs. The other has the most common single cylinder engine that comes in all the mowers in the past like 30 years and it’s a terrible design that grenades itself 1-4 times a year. And the prices of these new and used are out of this world even compared to baseline inflation. I decided to strip one of them and convert it to full electric using salvaged electric motors from Ryobi mowers and Amazon controllers. I have seen a few videos of this conversion and I do like the logic of having one motor for the drive wheels and one per blade rather than messing with fancy belts and pulleys and idlers and clutches. A really interesting part of this kind of build is that I can reuse Ryobi’s 40V batteries so I don’t need to design and build a custom battery + BMS + charging system. Just buy and wire enough connectors to run everything. And that’s where it would be really cool to see a properly engineered project around doing something like that. I see a lot of potential here since you can get these motors for roughly $50 shipped on eBay and a controller would be about as much.

aaron695 1y ago
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vdupras 1y ago
> And the prices of these new and used are out of this world even compared to baseline inflation. How many such cases do we need to have to be able to put out the hypothesis that the baseline inflation figures we're being fed are wrong?
- Mumps 1y ago
  If the poster is in the USA couldn't it be explained by Trump Tariffs (in addition to inflation)
  - IgorPartola 1y ago

ornel 1y ago

Lawn mowing seems like such a useless thing. I mean domestic lawns themselves, especially in a crisis of biodiversity loss, are such a waste of possibility. I had to stop the video when I saw the mower was going for a patch of clovers, thus reducing plant diversity to a single boring, useless species

woodpanel 1y ago
„biodiversity“ as in „just let the place rot and get covered by weeds until trees and over stuff planted by you collapse due to the massive-and-aggressiveness of pests and pesty weeds.
- blitzar 1y ago
  „biodiversity“ as in a mix of roads, gutters and cars. There was a suggestion of introducing some footpaths to the mix but there was concern it was too much diversity.
- r14c 1y ago
  a lot of folks don't understand permaculture when they first dive into it and end up in a bad situation. cultivating a pleasing ecosystem is both complicated a lot of work to get right, but eventually it can mostly take care of itself. sadly, traditional gardening doesn't really teach you how to maintain plants in concert or how to passively repel pests. it can be pretty rewarding to learn though if you don't mind getting into the science of it.
- smohare 1y ago
  [dead]
jabl 1y ago
Indeed. Sure, lawns do have their place, like for playing sports or for kids to play around. But otherwise, what a waste. Just plant some local flowers or whatever and have a meadow. As an example, at some point my father stopped bothering to mow his lawn all the time (basically only once per year). It's now a nice meadow with all kinds of grasses. Frogs, butterflies, dragonflies, bees like it. An additional issue with robotic mowers is that they tend to kill hedgehogs.

tauntz 1y ago

I dream of a day when my Mammotion Luba gets some decent working software. The HW is stellar, the SF is EXTREMELY bad :/

szundi 1y ago
[dead]
NiekvdMaas 1y ago
Agreed, the Mammotion hardware is amazing - the app is horrible. An open API would solve this as well, but there's little chance with the Chinese owners.

davenewton 1y ago

Very cool project, but CC-BY-NC-SA is "source available", not opensource :-(

Meneth 1y ago
Looks like the software project ( https://github.com/ClemensElflein/open_mower_ros https://github.com/ClemensElflein/open_mower_ros ) uses GPL-3.0.

jeremysalwen 1y ago

I run an Open mower on my 1400 square meter lawn in the USA. AMA. (ps. If you are interested make sure to go to the discord instead of just reading the docs or GitHub pages -- that is where all the activity is!)

napo 1y ago
Nice! How much time did it take you from the moment you started the project to the point where it fell like it was up & running?
- jeremysalwen 1y ago
  It's hard to put a specific number on it, since it's been progressively improving the whole time I had it. I bought it in the fall of 2023, and got it "running" then, but it was not actually doing any useful work. Summer of 2024 it was doing useful work but required constant hand holding and a series of hardware and software upgrades to get it more stable. This year it is actually doing the majority of the mowing. It still requires frequent rescue but it's a lot less work than actually mowing the lawn myself. However my lawn is probably the most difficult lawn of any openmower user. I'm in Vermont, so I have very steep terrain, a bumpy yard, poor GPS reception, very wet weather, and also my lawn is very large and complex shaped. For a simple use case it would be working great a long time ago. I also chose to do a "Mowgli" build which is based on more reverse engineering, which added complexity and unreliability (but saved some money).
zeroping 1y ago
How difficult was it to get the needed hardware in the US? It seems hard or expensive to do so.
- jeremysalwen 1y ago
  The yardforce500 is hard to find in the USA, but it's extremely cheap in Europe. I found a great deal and paid $208 for the mower and $135 for a package forwarder to ship it from Germany. I have a complete spreadsheet of my expenses here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BV8VCtqTer8iodXvyRd1aD0JH9nw67cjAnnOCCMXArY/edit?usp=drivesdk https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BV8VCtqTer8iodXvyRd1...

lionkor 1y ago

CC-BY-SA 4.0 is an interesting choice. I know this isn't a ShowHN, but was this chosen because it's copyleft, but hardware?

jeremysalwen 1y ago
The hardware+software used to both be under that same non commercial cc license, but there was recently a relicense of the software to GPL3. I think the goal is to just prevent someone else from profiting off of Clemens's work without him (while still allowing community use).
- pabs3 1y ago
  The GPLv3 does allow profiting off his work though, so that might not be the best choice of license. Especially since hardware vendors often deliberately don't comply with the GPL, and the only recourse is an expensive lawsuit.
  - swores 1y ago
    > "hardware vendors often deliberately don't comply with the GPL, and the only recourse is an expensive lawsuit." Isn't that unrelated to exact license choice, and going to be the case with any software that's wants to be open source but not allow commercial use? There's no license or wording in a license that can change the fact that, if you let people get the source for non-commercial use, there's nothing except the threat of lawsuits to stop anyone from ignoring the license and using it commercially.
    - pabs3 1y ago
      Thats going to be the case with almost any license, people even violate the MIT/BSD licenses. One possible exception is CC0, since it has no conditions.

PeterStuer 1y ago

I used to research autonomous vehicles long time ago. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to do a true random walk in a real physical environment due to all the inherent physical bias and implicit steering that results from the terrain.

boomskats 1y ago

So is this like Valetudo[0] but for mowers? Very cool! I wonder how much overlap / shared code there is between robot vacuums and robot mowers. [0]: https://valetudo.cloud/ https://valetudo.cloud/

aswegs8 1y ago
Thanks for the link, this is super useful. I will probably use both valetudo and openmower soon! Is there anything comparable for security cameras?
- jonah 1y ago
  Camera firmware: https://thingino.com https://thingino.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44791984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44791984 https://openipc.org https://openipc.org https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44758463 NVR: https://frigate.video https://frigate.video https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794508
- all2 1y ago
  > Is there anything comparable for security cameras? ReoLink + Frigate. [0] https://frigate.video/ https://frigate.video/
lxn 1y ago
Thanks for mentioning this. I did not know it existed, and it looks very interesting. I might try to "upgrade" my 7-year-old vacuum robot.
cuu508 1y ago
Unlike Valetudo, this uses the chassis and the motor of the lawn mower, but completely replaces electronics.
- reitanuki 1y ago
  The Mowgli project is reusing the mainboard of the original lawnmower (might be enhanced with a RPi though). It's not currently as well-baked (or at least, well-trodden) as the default OpenMower approach which does indeed involve ripping out the mainboard and replacing it.

firemelt 1y ago

I wonder how these guys know how install the new os or bypass the os that come with the bot

drzaiusx11 1y ago
They don't, it's a mainboard replacement project

coryodaniel 1y ago

One of my neighbors has a fleet of solar-powered, zero-emission, self-fertilizing, biodiversity-boosting autonomous lawn-care bots. He calls them tortoises.

j45 1y ago

It’s too bad this mower doesn’t appear readily available in North America.

micheljansen 1y ago

"Let's be honest: The current generation of robotic lawn mowers sucks. Basically all of these bots drive in a random direction until they hit the border of the lawn, rotate for a randomized duration and repeat. I think we can do better!" The funny thing is: this actually works incredibly well. Perimeter wires are a PITA to install, but once that's done, they are a very practical and flawless method for making sure the robot does not escape into the neighbour's yard or worse. The random movement is really effective too. What exactly can a smart robot do better? Removing the need for perimeter wires would be great, as long as it works 100% flawlessly. Obstacle detection would also be nice, so I can avoid my mower chewing up the toys my kid sometimes leaves lying around (though it is a great motivation to clean up!)

foobarian 1y ago
Regardless of how good the perimeter wire bots are, it's also not true that the more advanced generation "sucks." I have one and it works perfectly fine (Mammotion Luba 2). The hardware is great, positioning is great; there is always stuff to nitpick on the software side but at the end of the day that's great as well.
razemio 1y ago
I have a Mammotion Yuba and trust me, the grass looks awesome as a grid or in lines. It can even do logos. So far nicer looking grass and much faster then random.
- ai-christianson 1y ago
  I have a mix of older automowers (e.g. 315x) and newer bots like navimow x330. The navimow does "mini stripes" and they do look nice, but the grass tends to look a little more "carpet" like with the automower randomized pattern.
zamadatix 1y ago
It looks like obstacle avoidance is the key thing remaining in the software todos. For positioning it seems you get your pick of RTK GPS sensors, so it'd be interesting to still support guide wires for "escape protection".

cronelius 1y ago

i’m gonna anthropomorphize it

albertzeyer 1y ago

> The current generation of robotic lawn mowers sucks. Basically all of these bots drive in a random direction until they hit the border of the lawn, rotate for a randomized duration and repeat. I recently (a few weeks ago) bought one. While researching on the available options (which seemed relevant to me), actually almost none of the robots work this way. Most of them systematically go through the lawn. I think from those that I checked, only the Worx Landroid does it randomly. I was searching for some model which works without wires, because I was too lazy to set this up. Basically, in general, I wanted sth which required as little effort as possible. I decided for eufy E15, which uses camera (no GPS, no wires, no lidar, nothing else really). And it just seems to work. It creates a map first, and then systematically goes over the lawn. I didn't really need to do anything. (I'm not affiliated with eufy in any way. I'm just quite happy with it so far.) That said, obviously, having an open source variant of such a robot would be even nicer (if it works)! So I'm quite happy to see such a project. This robot here uses GPS, as far as I can see, as the sole technique for navigation and localization. From reports that I have read, GPS mostly works fine, except for some cases where it does not (where GPS coverage is not great). Camera on the other side always works (during daytime). Maybe this could be added to this project? Of course, using the camera is probably quite a bit more complicated, and more prone to errors, but overall might be more robust and reliable.

codegeek 1y ago
How large is your lawn and is it mostly flat ? I want to try one for my lawn but I have very large lawn and one side is slopy/steep.
- albertzeyer 1y ago
  Maybe 300 m^2 or so. The eufy E15 is for up to 800 m^2. There is the eufy E18 for up to 1200 m^2. I have seen other (more expensive, bigger) robots for much larger lawns. My garden is relatively flat with a few bumps here and there. You can also easily mark some areas of the lawn as always excluded so that it wont drive there.
goda90 1y ago
Maybe instead of GPS or camera, it could have a local positioning system instead. 3 small, solar powered beacons can be installed around the yard to be mowed.

uticus 1y ago

A compromise solution that cuts way down on complexity is remote controlled. Any suggestions for similar projects but RC instead of autonomous?

goda90 1y ago
Hook it up to the Internet and get the top Lawn Mowing Simulator players to do it for free.
- Corrado 1y ago
  Ender’s Game for lawnmowers

bob1029 1y ago

I really like the software & systems aspects of this, but I don't understand how homeowners are making the hardware work in non-ideal situations. It would have to be constantly mowing my lawn in Texas or it would be at risk of trapping itself in a jungle. There is no way a robot mower could deal with 10+ days of growth in the summer. I can stall a 7hp+ 22" mower at practically any speed if I try to cut a full width strip in these conditions.

R0flcopt3r 1y ago
It _is_ supposed to run constantly.
SV_BubbleTime 1y ago
Yes that is exactly it. It mows every day or a couple days. The blades on these look about razor blade size. If you don’t mow for a week you would need to hit it with a real mower.
dpoloncsak 1y ago
Like auto-vacuums changed user-habits from vacuuming one a week to running the machine daily, so too will auto-lawn mowers.

6stringmerc 1y ago

Can the liability for damage to property or persons also be open sourced in the United States in case one of these things throws a rock and breaks a window or runs over an errant French Bulldog in spite of it "not supposed to be there in the first place" parameters? If you think I'm kidding, I'm in Texas. If robotic mowing was in any way shape or form viable, it would be at an Enterprise Level here. IT IS NOT. Fields still take tractors and industrial level maintenance to avoid creating a public liability, aka, fire hazard. All these projects do in the short term is devalue the human who would otherwise be the one mowing the yard. Want to impress me? Create a mobile Open Source AI / Tech powered MOBILE DENTISTRY SYSTEM that fits in a MB Sprinter Van and can come to communities and provide services at scale. My bad. I almost forgot solving problems is secondary to drumming up bullshit narratives to get funding.

wing-_-nuts 1y ago
>Can the liability for damage to property or persons also be open sourced in the United States in case one of these things throws a rock and breaks a window or runs over an errant French Bulldog in spite of it "not supposed to be there in the first place" parameters? Man, between you and the hedgehog guy, y'all are hilarious. Yeah, if it throws a rock, you're liable for it. If it runs over a dog, that dog was already dead. Are you aware of how slowly these things move? I'll also chime in 'it's not supposed to be in my yard'. >All these projects do in the short term is devalue the human who would otherwise be the one mowing the yard. Funny how we all recognize AI in other domains frees up labor to work on more important things. I'm sure landscapers would love this.

pabs3 1y ago

Might be best to not mow that lawn, think of the bees instead. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0006320717306201 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00063...

objcts 1y ago

i have a mammotion luba 2 AWD and it's saved me days this summer! so much more time to spend with the kids and less time sweating. i've had it running since May and it's been amazing so far. i hope it can continue going strong and that the product ecosystem around it continues to improve. if it falls apart, i dunno if i can go back to mowing the lawn without a robot. i recently wrote a review of my experience here: https://mfelix.org/reviews/mammotion-luba2/ https://mfelix.org/reviews/mammotion-luba2/ it's not hard to see how given enough time, these things will completely replace a whole sector of human labor. why pay someone hundreds of dollars a month (or do the work yourself) when the robotic options are good enough?

Sibinarendran 1y ago

looks cool, how to buy one?