GoKawiilEarlier this year, I replaced my battery-powered push mower with an iPhone-controlled robot lawn mower. That machine creates a virtual map by letting you manually steer it around the perimeter of your yard. Once everything is configured, it takes over mowing duties on a schedule.
More recently, I’ve been testing another system called the TerraMow V1000. It takes a substantially different approach to navigation, and after several weeks of testing, I think it may be the more user-friendly option for a lot people.
Camera-powered automatic mapping
The biggest difference between the TerraMow V1000 and the Anthbot M9 I reviewed earlier this year is how each machine understands your yard.
Anthbot M9 uses an RTK reference station for positioning. Its setup process had me manually steering the mower around the perimeter from my iPhone to create the initial map.
TerraMow V1000 instead uses what the company calls its TerraVision 2.0 system. Three cameras let the mower map the lawn automatically and navigate without a buried perimeter wire or separate RTK antenna.
The automatic approach took a lot longer to create my initial map. However, I think it is probably easier for someone who is less interested in tinkering with technology.
To test that theory, I let my mom in another state set up and use TerraMow V1000 without my assistance. She reported back that everything worked great. I’m less certain that she would have had the patience to manually drive a robot around the full perimeter first, manually marking areas to avoid.
Automatic mapping did introduce one quirk in my front yard. There is no fence or other physical divider between my lawn and my neighbor’s lawn, so TerraMow initially added part of their yard to my map.
I fixed this in the app by marking that section as off-limits. Still, lawns without distinct visual boundaries may require extra attention during the initial mapping process.
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