Tending a garden is an enjoyable way to spend a sunny afternoon, but mowing the lawn is too much of a chore. Robot helpers have been on hand for decades, and the latest from Segway taps into AI for dual mapping and positioning chops.
At a previous property, my lawn rolled over two levels and took a good few hours with a battery push mower to clip into shape, or a little over an hour on the tractor mow. As a result, I didn't look forward to tending the garden on otherwise beautiful sunny days. Automated wheeled trimmers help free up much of that time and labor, allowing proud gardeners to focus on planting, pruning, clipping or just kicking back and admiring the green-thumbed masterpiece.
For some models, users will need to install boundary wires to prevent mowbots from running amok in prized flower beds. But Segway opted to rely on a GPS-based mapping and positioning solution in 2021, with the introduction of its Navimow.
As with that model, the new i Series will need to map edge boundaries, but this time around the company has cooked in what's reported to be the industry's first AI assistant, enabling the mower to automatically detect the edge of a grassed area and navigate around the garden to create a map of the work area. A companion app allows users to fine-tune or revise the auto-mapped work area – marking zones to avoid, for example, such as the bee-friendly wild flower section – and also caters for mow schedules to be set.
The latest version of Segway's Exact Fusion Locating System pairs an in-house real-time-kinetic system with a 140-degree vision camera, that taps into GNSS positioning for centimeter-level accuracy in fairly open spaces while switching to the vision system under dense tree cover or when the satellite signal is weak.
The wide-angle camera also feeds into the bot's VisionFence obstacle avoidance system, which can recognize and react to almost 30 different types of objects – including trees, curbs, running children and small animals.
Segway says that the i Series models employ "a unique zigzag cutting pattern, changing angle after the first round of mowing is complete to ensure every blade of grass is covered." They will even steal some of Electric Sheep's Verdie thunder by straddling lawn and non-grass areas to get to "those tough-to-reach edges that both traditional and robotic mowers struggle to reach."
The roving blade cutter is designed to handle inclines of up to 30%, is waterproof to IP66 standards for easy hose-down cleaning, and when its battery starts to run low, it will return to its dock for a top up. An optional 4G module also allows users to check in remotely.
The Navimow i Series made its US debut at CES 2024 back in January, and has now gone up for sale. There are two models available: the US$999 i105N features a 2.55-Ah battery and is geared towards properties with up to an eighth of an acre (0.05 ha) of lawn, while the i110N gains a 5.1-Ah battery to tackle quarter-acre (0.1 ha) gardens for $1,299.
Product page: Navimow i Series
