We've now spent several months with the latest wire-free Landroid robo-mower, and we've found it a mix of confusing, educational, satisfying and highly entertaining. Oddly enough, the one thing the Vision seems to need... is a bit more vision.
I firmly believe there must be perks to this tech writing gig, and one perk I've long dreamed of sampling is having my lawns mowed by a robot. That's the kind of job they need to be taking off us instead of movie-making or music, if you ask me. So I rubbed my hands together with glee at the chance to play with the Landroid Vision.
This is one of the new wave of "Advanced AI" mowers. You don't need to slog your way around the garden burying wire boundaries; the Vision has a HD, wide-angle, 15-fps camera that lets it map out the lawn for itself, avoiding obstacles, pets and small children as it goes. It's got auto-scheduling you can tune to the specific type of grass you've got, multi-zone management so it can handle split lawns, and a cut-to-edge function so you don't have to follow it around as much with a whipper-snipper. Bravo! Sign me up!
Setup
The Vision lives on a little charging pad that you're supposed to place on, or just off, the lawn you want it to manage. From there, you can have it "explore" the lawn, or you can pick it up and drop it on more or less any lawn, and tell it to just get on with a mow.
If you have a multi-section lawn split by a path, you'll need to place down a couple of RFID markers to tell it where's safe to cross. If there are areas you want it to avoid altogether, you'll still have to wire those off. It's a bit of a pain, but still far less annoying than running around laying wire around the entire working area.
Given a single or path-split lawn to manage, the Landroid Vision will trace its way around the edges (annoyingly, not mowing as it goes), then go back home for a good hard think about things before creating an auto-schedule for itself and heading out to crack on with the job.
Landroid Vision on the job
It works much like a Roomba as it mows, mooching slowly and quietly around a space at random angles in a manner that doesn't look particularly intelligent, artificially so or otherwise. Indeed, my son and I have sat there watching it and scratching our heads over several cups of tea, prompting a neighbor to suggest we might find it just as entertaining to watch the grass grow back.
The first time it does a particular lawn, it does a job on par with "toddler gets hold of the clippers and attempts first hair cut." But over the space of a few mows, it gets the bulk of the lawn looking very slick, and happily keeps it that way over time with minimal intervention.
"It's a true AI device," says David Sambrook, Managing Director at Worx Australia, as we catch up for a video call, "in that it learns its surroundings and gets better week on week. It's also connected to all the other robots in the world, those collected learnings are downloaded to each machine individually as a software update. That's very new, we're leading the rest in terms of AI machine learning."
In my experience, the Vision handles wide grassy spaces very well, and reliably stops when there's a foot or a toy or a garden hose in front of it. Indeed, sometimes it'll stare down a particularly colorful leaf, or a patch of dirt, or a dandelion, and decide to back off and go around. This strikes me as the sort of thing that'll likely improve with updates.
And I've noticed improvements over time – in particular, it's now figured out it can safely cross pavers. That's great, it was giving them a wide berth before. Here's hoping it soon gains the confidence to cross bare dirt and handle patchier areas.
A disturbing lack of Vision
On the other hand, its camera points so resolutely downward that it fails to see things like cars or boat trailers parked on the lawn, as well as some bushes, and the slide coming off my kids' cubby house. So it'll nose its way in under things and get wedged in there, spinning its wheels until it gives up and messages you for help.
In the case of cars, well, it sometimes bumps into them, then gets confused, and tries to turn around so it can get its bearings, and in doing so, it rubs and scratches against them. Not a big drama among the humble fleet our family drives, but we'd recommend you be very careful to keep the Vision switched off if you park a nice car on the grass. Lookit:
"Yes, the camera's looking downward to determine what's grass and what isn't," Sambrook tells me. "If something's suspended off the ground that way, then it's likely for a robot to hit it. I've had somebody call me about a boat trailer before – I can understand that, they're a bit higher. In regards to cars, that's a new one for me. If that becomes more of a prevalent problem, then of course we'll come up with something to counterbalance that."
Where these robo-mowers shine, and where they don't
One thing that's important to understand if you' re buying this generation of robo-mower is that they're much more effective in some situations than others. The Landroid Vision did a remarkable job down at my parents' holiday house, managing a vast single lawn maybe twice the size of the 1,300 square meters (14,000 sq ft) it's designed to handle, running on a single lithium battery that's interchangeable with other Worx tools like cordless drills.
It was more of a pain at my house, which has a small, split back lawn, a medium-sized, split front lawn, and two nature strips at the front and side of the property. It can't travel more than a few feet between zones, or ping you with a message asking you to open a gate when it's time to mow out front.
Sambrook tells us there's a real-time kinematic (RTK) module that's coming as an accessory, and which may also be built into future Landroid Vision mowers. This will give the mower a GPS-like ability to locate itself, possibly opening up the ability to navigate multiple separate lawns connected by longer paths.
For now, the way to mow these other sections is pretty much to pick this 16-odd-kg (35 lb) machine up by its handle, plonk it down in the new spot, and tell it to just go ahead and mow, pretending it's on the lawn it already mapped out. It does just as good a job, although it never gets to learn the edges properly and as a result it leaves those looking pretty shaggy. If you're happy enough working in this fairly manual sort of way, you can take care of all your grass zones. But it's certainly heavy enough to be awkward to carry.
And on the other hand, it's also light enough to be stolen fairly easily, which makes me nervous about using it for things like nature strips despite the PIN code security you need to turn it on. Sambrook tells me there's an audible alarm accessory dropping soon, and that the mower can be bricked remotely if it's stolen and then connected to Wi-Fi again. Another item in development is a GPS tracker module you can install to track the machine if anyone absconds with it.
It might just be my lawns, but I haven't found the Landroid Vision particularly good at edges, along fences or around the posts holding up the kids' cubby house. This doesn't seem to have improved over time with machine learning, but it's a quick enough thing to tidy up with a trimmer, and the whole thing is certainly easier than pushing a mower around the place myself.
What else has it got?
In terms of specs, it runs a three-blade, self-leveling cutting disc adjustable between 30-60 mm (1.2-2.4 inches) in height. The blades themselves are tiny two-way razors, and easily replaceable if you accidentally mow something capable of fighting back.
It's got a rain sensor, and it's your decision whether it keeps mowing in the wet or not, depending on how annoyed you get about soggy clippings sticking to your shoes. It's perfectly happy to live outdoors, with IPX5-level waterproofing. You can get a little garage for it if you'd prefer to keep it out of the elements, but on the other hand the rain does give it a nice wash, saving you from having to hose it down.
It runs Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for setup and updates, and you can program and operate it through a mobile app. I'm not gonna say I love that app; I don't. Indeed, the less I've interacted with it, the more I've enjoyed this machine. The minute I learned you can just press a couple of physical buttons on the robot and have it just start mowing wherever you've put it – that was a real breakthrough in our relationship.
Probably the most disappointing thing about the Landroid Vision is found in that app, in a button labeled "Party Mode." I was confused, then sad, then a little angry to find this does not make the Landroid start partying. Instead, "Party Mode" tells the mower to go sit on its charging cradle, because there's a party on in the yard and it's not invited. Brutal.
Conclusions
I ask Sambrook how Worx is dealing with the switch from hand-held power tools to swarm-learning AI robotics. "This is an exciting machine for us," says Sambrook. "But we've been in robotics since 2011, so it's not new to us. In fact, today, the largest part of our business is robotics, followed by power garden, then power tools – that's shifted, because more and more people are moving away from DIY power tools. It's more 'do it for me' rather than 'I'll do it myself.'"
"So yes," he continues, "it's exciting. The whole world's come from that boundary wire solution – and don't get me wrong, that's a good solution, you've just got to spend hours on your knees digging in boundary wires. Landroid Vision is that real plug-and-play, with perhaps a little bit of magnetic wire around the boat trailer, and where the cars park on the grass, for example."
At the end of the day, my case is probably an outlier due to the slides and parked cars and boat trailers and whatnot that pepper the lawns I've thrown the new Landroid at. So while it is annoying that the Vision doesn't have the... well, vision, to stop itself from running into things that are elevated off the ground, it certainly won't be an issue for everyone, and not all of these machines are destined to bear the scars and scratches this one does as a result.
One thing's worth making very clear: given a big ol' patch of grass without such obstacles, the Landroid Vision will quietly and reliably keep it looking exceptionally tidy, rarely asking for any assistance at all. And it can certainly manage more complex situations if you're willing to carry it around a bit, or wire off the areas to avoid.
Our neighbors, both here at home and down at our family coastal shack, have been fascinated and impressed in equal measure – a vast departure from how they normally feel about my lawns, I can tell you.
At AU$3,799 (US$1,999 in the USA), it's an expensive acquisition. You could buy nine and a half of Worx's own 40-volt electric push mowers for that, or pay a local contractor to pop round and keep your yard tidy once a month for a couple of years. On the other hand, if you see lawn care as a pain in the butt, or simply like the idea of keeping things absolutely pristine at all times, it's hardly an extravagance in the scheme of things.
I'll be sorry to see this little fella head back to Worx HQ, where Sambrook tells me it'll be interrogated to figure out if there's anything the swarm can learn from my experiences. The Landroid Vision may not be a perfect product on debut, but it sure has kept my lawns looking great.
Product page: Worx
