cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/36230046
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!
Therefore, we have disassembled the cheapest off-the-shelf robotic mower we could find (YardForce Classic 500) and were surprised that the hardware itself is actually quite decent:
- Geared sensored brushless motors for the wheels
- A sensored brushless motor for the mower motor itself
- The whole construction seems robust, waterproof and all in all thought through
- All components are connected using standard connectors, therefore upgrading the hardware is easily possible.
The bottom line is: The bot itself is surprisingly high quality and doesn’t need to be changed at all. We just need some better software in there.
I need this but for Roombas.
Check out Valetudo.
It’s so ironic that valetudo doesn’t support roomba considering roombas used to be a hackable robotics platform, even selling the robots without the vacuum components, with many models of vacuums shipping with serial ports right on top.
Been using valetudo for years. Love it.
The world has needed it for printers for decades.
OMG, yes please 🙏
Hasn’t this problem long been solved in roomba’s? Mine is about 8 years old and it doesn’t go around randomly. I assumed all new models don’t do that anymore, except for some very cheap off brand vacuum robots.
I mean the open firmware. And mine is older.
Yes that would be nice to have. Sadly when I bought my Roomba I didn’t care too much about that. My next one will be hackable though.
You can’t compare indoors and outdoors directly. I think random has its means in an uneven environment. It simply doesn’t matter if the odometry sucks, if the wheels stick in muddy earth or small sticks block on side.
Advanced sensors such as GPS and cam isn’t very precise outdoors. That’s why newer models come with its own positioning sender.
I was mostly talking about roombas/indoor. For outdoors you have GPS with RTK which most mowers use that work without a boundary wire, afaik.