According to an article posted on housedigest, the average American spends 70 hours per year mowing, weeding, fertilizing, and “all the other little things we bury in a lawn.” When compared to, according to Forbes, the 11 days of vacation that the average American worker is provided with each year by their employer, you could almost double the amount of time off you have by finding an alternative to cutting your lawn yourself.
One option, of course, is to pay a lawn service to cut your lawn for you. However, according to Lawn Love, lawn mowing typically costs between $50 and $190 per service. That equates to around $2700 for the lawn service to cut your lawn each year if your lawn needs to be cut weekly between mid-April and mid-September.
Given all the above, investing in a quality robotic lawn mower that will last for many years makes sense from both a financial perspective and from the perspective of the added time it will give you to relax and unwind from your work week, the additional time you will have to be with your family, and the added time you will have to spend pursuing the forms of recreation that you love.
Segway isn’t a company that the average person associates with robotic lawn mowers. The brand was founded in 1999 followed by the introduction of their self-balancing, two-wheeled, personal transporters in 2002. The company has come a long way since then and now manufactures a wide range of electric scooters, electric go-karts, eMopeds, off-road ATVs, transportation and service robots, portable power stations, and, since 2021, robotic mowers.
New for 2024 is Segway’s i Series of Navimow robotic mowers. This latest generation of robotic mowers from Segway features:
- App Control
- Safety first design with bump, lift, and tilt sensors.
- Can climb slopes up to 30% (16 degrees)
- Completely waterproof (IP66 rated) and easy to clean
- Extremely quiet – Only 58 dB(A) – Less than the noise level of an average conversation
- The ability to divide a lawn into multiple zones. Zones can then be individually scheduled for cutting.
- Automatically suspend mowing in adverse weather based on local Internet weather forecasts
- Real-time status updates on the progress of mowing in the app including the current position of the mower
- Over-the-air software updates
- An optional 4G cellular radio (includes one year of connectivity) provides enhanced communications when Wi-Fi connectivity is poor. It also provides anti-theft notifications when the mower is moved outside its virtual boundary.
However, what really separates the Navimow i series mower from the competition is its ability to navigate precisely around a yard, cutting the grass without the need for a perimeter wire to keep it from leaving the yard, wandering into flower beds, or getting into other kinds of trouble. Instead, to precisely navigate, the mower uses a unique high-precision location technology called EFLS (Exact Fusion Locating System). EFLS combines satellite positioning data acquired by the receiver in the mower and the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) antenna that is placed in the yard. It also uses data collected by sensors in the mower including a gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetic compass, and odometer. The position of bushes, trees, and other landmarks is captured by the mower’s 140-degree wide field of view camera during a mapping process.
ELFS also assists the mower in avoiding obstacles during mowing. And, the mower uses data collected by its camera to assure that the mower doesn’t navigate into any non-grass areas such as paved pathways, patios, the driveway, or the street.
Segway supplied me with a Navimow i110N mower to evaluate for this article.
Planning Your Navimow i110N Installation
The advanced design of the Navimow i Series mower saves a great deal of time during installation compared to a robotic mower that requires installing a perimeter wire. However, what the Navimow i Series mower does require is more up-front planning to properly locate the charging station and the GNSS antenna.
Instead of simply placing the charging station next to the house and near a power outlet, both the charging station and the GNSS antenna require a clear view of the sky so they can receive signals from multiple satellites that transmit GPS information. Segway recommends that both be positioned 2 meters (6.6 feet) away from structures, trees, and walls.
To assist with positioning of the charging station and GNSS antenna, the Navimow app includes a satellite analyzer that evaluates whether these devices can properly receive the GPS signals required for the mower to accurately navigate.
In addition, to further assist in finding the ideal location to place the mower’s charging station Segway will be adding a feature that allows a user to guide the mower around their yard using the Segway app, and the app will report the quality of the GPS signal received by the mower. This feature is being delivered through an OTA update and should be available for users shortly after this article is published.
In my case I couldn’t place the Navimow charging station on the north side of our house where I have placed previous robotic mowers that I have tested. While this is an ideal location because it is out of site and is convenient to an outside outlet, there is poor access to satellites due to the trees and the overhanging eaves of our roof.
After some significant negotiation with my wife, the Navimow charging station and the GNSS antenna were placed at the edge of a flower bed in our backyard. This location provided good satellite reception and, thanks to a long extension to the power supply cord, the charging station could be plugged into an outlet on the side of our house. Using an electric edger, I cut a groove in our lawn and used the included stakes to secure the power supply cord in the bottom of the narrow groove. This both hides the power supply cord and assures it is protected from damage.
With installation complete, the next step was to map the yard.
Mapping the Yard
Mapping a lawn with the Navimow is akin to playing a video game. You simply drive the mower around the perimeter of the yard using the Navimow app on a smart phone to control the path of the mower. In addition, the app includes an AI-assisted mapping function where the mower can drive itself when the boundary of the lawn is well defined, such as when the lawn borders a street or driveway. Once complete, the map can be edited in the app if needed.
Using the app, you can map areas of your lawn separately and name them so they can, if desired, be cut individually. You can also map out other areas that the mower shouldn’t enter and add connectors between the sections, so the mower knows how to fully navigate the yard. The connectors can even cross areas that don’t include grass that the mower’s EFLS navigation would normally avoid.
While I don’t play video games, I found mapping very easy to complete. You simply follow the mower as you drive it around the yard using your smart phone and the Segway app. A great feature is the erase button. If, for example, you drive the mower too far into a corner to make a proper turn, the erase button backs the mower up, erasing that portion of the mapping, and you can then remap that section.
The AI-assisted mapping worked well when I was mapping the path next to my driveway. It would not work, however, when I tried to map along the path to my front door that is made up of brown pavers. I expect there wasn’t enough contrast between my currently dormant grass (it is still very early spring here in the mountains where I live) and the color of the pavers.
Navigation
I’m calling this article a first look because, as I just mentioned, it is very early spring here in the mountains. The snow has just melted from my yard, but the lawn has barely begun to grow. Therefore, I’m only able to describe the installation, mapping, and navigation capabilities of the Navimow, not its mowing performance. I’ll follow this article up with a later with an update that covers the mowing performance.
Unlike most robotic mowers, the Navimow doesn’t randomly run around the yard, cutting the lawn until it has covered the entire yard. This is very inefficient as the mower will inevitably cut areas of the lawn over, and over again. Instead, the Navimow cuts the lawn the same way a person would, in nice, neat, overlapping rows. After the lawn has been fully cut, the Navimow will change the orientation of the rows to make sure that grooves aren’t dug in the lawn from the mower’s wheels repeatedly going over the same path in the lawn.
The edges of a lawn can be challenging for robotic mowers. However, the Navimow i Series offers a solution using the mower’s ability to detect edges. By default, the mower will operate within the virtual boundary of the yard, leaving a small strip of uncut grass along the edge. In Ride-on Boundary mode, the mower will ride along the physical edge between grass and non-grass areas to fully cut the edge of the lawn. This is very useful where the boarder of the yard is a driveway, path, or possibly a road.
Finally, as advertised, the mower is incredibly quiet. If the mower didn’t use its camera to assist in navigation, the mower is so quiet that there would be little chance of it disturbing someone sleeping at night with the windows to their bedroom wide open. The mower could easily be operated during a party without disturbing the festivities.
Other Features
Trying to run any robotic mower during, or just after, rain is a sure way to damage a lawn. The lawn becomes slick and the spinning drive wheels will tear up a lawn, plus wet grass in more likely to clump around the mower’s cutting blade. Segway uses a feature called Weather Adaptive to pause or delay the mower due to adverse weather conditions. Weather Adaptive uses a combination of internet weather forecasts and the mower’s camera to sense rain.
Using the Segway app, users can customize the mower’s sensitivity level to adjust how it responds to different amounts of rain — whether it will continue to mow or return to the charging station. Users can also set up how much time to delay mowing after it has stopped raining to avoid mowing on a muddy lawn. I wasn’t able to test this feature because it was being delivered through an OTA software that was scheduled to arrive shortly after this article was being published.
Integration
At this point in time, the Navimow doesn’t include integration with any smart home platforms. I believe that Segway needs to provide an applications programming interface (API) so that the mower can be integrated with a smart home.
One reason I believe that an API is needed is that the scheduling capabilities in the app are too simplistic. Like many people in the world, I live in an area where fresh water has become a very scarce and valuable resource. To conserve water, we have very strict rules for when you can water your lawn. In my case, anyone with an even house number can only water on even days of the month. If you live in a house with an odd house number, then you can only water on odd days of the month. Finally, nobody can water on the 31st day of the month. Watering can also only be done during the evening, night, or early morning to minimize evaporation.
Scheduling that only allows you to set mowing times on given days of the week (Sunday through Saturday) doesn’t include the functionality to avoid conflicts with my watering schedule. On the other hand, my smart home processor could easily send a command to start the mower on days/times that my lawn isn’t being watered and has had time to dry on days where it was watered earlier.
Segway shared with me that integration with Alexa and Google Assistant is on their roadmap and planned for a future OTA software update. If the implementation provides for the mower to be controlled through routines, and not just voice commands, this will provide the functionality for intelligent smart home integration and will be a very welcome addition when it becomes available. However, using routines would mean that the API wouldn’t work during an internet outage. A local API, where a smart home processor/hub could communicate directly to the mower instead of to a cloud service, would be a much better solution.
Areas for Improvement
Segway has chosen to position the Navimow i series models as entry-level robotic mowers and priced them at only $999 for the i105N (designed for lawns up to 1/8 acre) and $1299 for the i110N (designed for lawns up to ¼ acre). These prices are a fraction of what some of the other robotic mowers that also don’t require a perimeter wire, cost. It is even less expensive than some mowers that do require a perimeter wire to operate. As a lower priced entry-level mower, there are limitations to the number of features Segway can afford to build into the product. However, that doesn’t stop me from wishing for a few additions.
Obstacle Sensor – The Navimow uses its front camera to avoid obstacles and sensors that perceive when the mower doesn’t move forward to detect when it has struck an object. Obstacle avoidance with the camera works well, but if the mower gets caught by, for example, a fence post that it is trying to navigate next to, the wheels will spin for a second before the mower detects the problem and stops. The spinning drive wheel can make a small cut, down to the dirt, in the lawn. In contrast, robotic vacuums all include a front bumper that senses when the vacuum has run into an object. A front sensor that would immediately detect that the mower has struck an object would keep it from damaging the lawn this way.
Local API/Integration Capability – For the reasons described above.
Help – The Segway app for operating the Navimow mower is reasonably easy to use. However, there are quite a few places where icons are used in the app, and it isn’t clear what their function is. Better help in the app would provide the user with information on what functions all the icons perform.
Zone Mowing – When you press the mow button on the front page of the app, the mower assumes you want to mow the whole lawn. There is no ability to choose one or more zones. The only way I found to mow specific zones is to use the schedule. You should be able to choose a specific zone to be immediately mowed so, for example, you can cut the front yard before a party, so your home looks its best before guests arrive.
Summary & Conclusions
The Navimow i Series mower is an incredible value. The sophisticated mapping and navigation set it apart from other entry-level mowers at its price point and even many more expensive mowers. Integration would allow smart home owners to overcome some limitations, like its limited scheduling ability, and provide for integration with a homeowner’s smart weather station to provide hyperlocal weather conditions, for assurance that the mower doesn’t operate in the rain.
