Lawns can be dynamic areas. There might be something on it today that wasn't there yesterday.

Traditionally, robotic lawnmowers have (mostly) not run over or into randomly dropped toys, deck chairs, sleeping dogs, or a myriad of other possibilities by employing impact sensors on bumper bars or built into their shells that get triggered when crashing into objects. Some models employ ultrasonic sensors to scan ahead.

Only Segway's Navimow uses an advance AI (Artificial Intelligence) camera system called VisionFence to look at and make sense of the lawn ahead as it mows.

Yesterday we trimmed our hedge, but rain prevented the job getting finished and the clippings being picked up off the lawn.

Navimow, being a diligent chap, was keen to get out onto the lawn and keep it mowed, on account of recent rain and warm weather making the grass grow.

Thanks to VisionFence, Navimow could "see" the clippings on the lawn, dynamically adapt its route on the fly, and mow around them. As you can see in the Figures below, there are a lot of clippings. If Navimow was to drive into them it could become caught up and stuck, and there could be some unnecessary wear on the blades as well.

No other robotic lawnmower can deal with and work with dynamically changing lawn environments like Navimow. All models of Navimow sold in New Zealand feature VisionFence.

If an owner has VisionFence turned off then an Exclusion Zone can be temporarily added to the Map, then deleted once the trimmings had been removed from the lawn. But with VisionFence turned on, this extra step is not required.

Here's a demarcation line illustrating how close Navimow mowed up to the clippings.

Here's an exploded view of the real-time progress of Navimow on the Map showing where VisionFence has ensured mowing did not extend into the clippings (Figure 5). The jagged edge pointed at by the green arrow shows where VisionFence has identified the irregular, safe-to-mow boundary where the clippings are heaped on the lawn. You can also see that Navimow had mowed around the boundary of the lawn before hedge cutting began.

Robotic lawnmowers that rely on a surface or buried boundary wire cannot deal with this kind of situation. The only options are not to mow (and let the grass keep growing), or lay some kind of physical barrier across the lawn that the mower can crash into to prevent it entering the area with the clippings. The latter is not a practical option in the situation illustrated in these photos.

Every Segway Navimow has VisionFence, and every Navimow model has mowing without boundary wires. Call 0800 SEGWAY to buy Navimow in New Zealand.