Mova
The promise of a robotic lawn mower has always been an appealing one. Set it loose in the garden to get on with the job, and reclaim a chunk of your weekend in the process. That idea has been around for years on paper, but the reality is that it has taken much longer for robot mowers to live up to that hands-off ideal.
The problem hasn’t been power or even cutting ability. Modern robotic mowers are more than capable of trimming grass cleanly and consistently. Where things have historically fallen apart is navigation. A mower that can’t reliably understand where it is or where to go will always need more babysitting than most people expect from an “autonomous” machine.
The art of navigation
Mova
To understand why navigation matters so much in robotic mowing, it helps to look at how these machines have traditionally found their way around a garden — and why each approach had its limits.
The earliest robotic lawn mowers relied on physical boundary wires. These wires were buried around the edge of the lawn and acted as a strict border that the mower wouldn’t cross. As long as the wiring was done correctly, the system was reliable. However, installing boundary wires is a manual, time-consuming task that can take several hours and often requires professional assistance. Once the wires are in place, they also lock the mower into a fixed understanding of the garden.
Each previous approach had clear limits.
More recent robotic mowers moved away from physical wires and adopted RTK, or Real-Time Kinematic positioning. RTK uses satellite signals, corrected by a fixed base station, to locate the mower with high accuracy. This removed the need to bury wires in the ground, but it came with its own compromises. The base station and signal beacons still need careful placement, and the mower’s performance depends heavily on consistent satellite reception. Gardens aren’t always ideal environments for that. Trees, walls, narrow passages, and even shifting shadows throughout the day can interfere with signal quality.
Both methods rely on external guidance, whether that is a wire in the ground or a satellite reference point. LiDAR takes a different approach altogether.
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