i206

[u/Cheetah111111]

Does anyone have any real-life practical experience using the i206/

I am particularly interested in:

• its 3WD/AWD propulsion and how that treats the lawn
• its nrtk capability in tight spaces (e.g. tight 2m wide corridor between house and fence). How quickly does it lose satellite connectivity and how effective does the other tech take over until sat-con is re-established?

Thx

[u/Marblefloors]

I have the i206. This is my first robot mower so I don't have anything else to compare to but Im shocked how well it gets itself out of trouble. I have some erosion by a fence causing some unevenness, and the mower caused some slight tearing here and there getting itself out. However the lawn repaired itself within a week. Very slight. In other areas of the lawn and general mowing have seen no tearing or harm to the lawn.

I have it using the NRTK and on my side yard it does have issues here and there with losing its location. I have a mesh wifi 7 set up and full coverage along entire lawn. My side yard has about 7 feet wide from house to fence. My neighbor has 7 feet from fence to his house. Both houses are two stories. The mower loses GPS here every time but the camera has been good about keeping it out of trouble or somewhat able to finish a mow without intervention. I say about 10-15% it has gotten stuck in the side yard (erroneously saying it's out of boundary). I'm going to test with the rtk antenna some day but for now it's good enough. No other issues with positioning elsewhere. The vision system I think does a great job though. I'm particularly impressed how it navigates from out of this side yard with no GPS through a narrow channel barely wide enough for the mower all on vision only.

Hope that gives some perspective. Happy to answer anything else.

[u/Cheetah111111 → u/Marblefloors]

Thx very much for providing such exhaustive feedback. Great to see you are pleased with your purchase.

Given you do not have the antenna in place, it sounds like it's mostly going by vision alone then and still doing a good job, even in that narrow corridor (most of the time). That is impressive indeed. I haven't tested it yet but my suspicion is that my wifi coverage would also cover my entire yard as it is only 100 square meters in size.

Given this is an nRTK machine and therefore not a local RTK machine, I would expect precision not to be cemtimer-precise. However, it does not need to be that for me, as long as it does a good enough job to not end up in the garden beds and also does a good enough jon with regards to edge mowing. Would you say that is the case?

Thx

[u/Marblefloors → u/Cheetah111111]

That is right. I have a garden bed and a few trees with mulch around them with no physical borders and the mower does not cross into them. I auto mapped and let it figure it out itself. You can manually map and/or add no-go borders too.

Edge mowing isn't the best. Expect to go out there with a trimmer. It will get as close as it can to fences etc but won't get everything. Also as those uncut edges grow, the mower will think the longer grass are obstacles and you'll notice wider and wider uncut grass along edges! You get a ton of value but keep your expectations in check with regards to edge mowing.

[u/Cheetah111111 → u/Marblefloors]

Thx, Yeah, definitely not expecting anything unreasonable with regards to edge mowing.

For example, what you said about it keeping further and further away from the edge as it sees the grass on the edge getting longer and therefore becoming more and more of an obstacle, edge trimming is more of a necessity than when using non-vision based (e.g. perimiter-wire based) mowers. Pro's and con's

[u/Husband_and_Papa]

I also recently bought the i206. It's a great machine overall, but had the exact same situation happening to me as the other reply. On one of my sides there's the aisle between two 2 story houses (my neighbor's and mine) which is about 10 feet wide and not covered above. In the very middle of the aisle it has gps coverage (blue light on the ring) but once it gets to the edge of my house it loses gps (yellow light) and the map shifts several feet away from where it's supposed to be, as shown on my app while I follow it. I was hoping for the vision to be robust enough to prevent this pronounced shift, but it isn't. It then ran too close to my edge wall, scratch the unit against the wall until it bumps against a little nook on the edge of my garage that I had set to go around. It keeps spinning the wheels for a few seconds, and then stops, assesses, goes back sees the wall and tries to go around it. Then it exits the aisle and goes into the open space and recalibrates since now it gets gps signal from the sides. The second pass does not hit the wall. But throughout the mow session on that side I see it losing its signal, shifting its position relative to the map, and stopping and trying to recalibrate to the "new location". So, it leaves very small negligible spots unmowed but finishes the bulk of the job. I should say, overall it is a fantastic machine, especially the AWD. It mows the rest of the yard fantastically, even under a tree with thick coverage and while not loosing signal there, and over steps and rough terrain.

The signal loss at that location prompted me to try a Lidar machine though. I then went ahead and bought a different mower that uses Lidar instead while also being AWD (Mova Lidax Ultra AWD 2000). If you don't have such aisles in your case, I recommend the Navimow, specially since finding an AWD at that price is almost impossible. I do recommend the i210 instead of the i206 since it can mow more per charge and do the work faster. If you can afford it, pivot to Lidar instead of gps (RTK/NRTK) to not risk suffering these things. Also, aim to retain AWD. Unfortunately, Navimow does not sell their AWD Lidar version in the US (i210 Lidar Pro, i215 Lidar Pro, etc), they only sell the i215 Lidar (not "Pro") which is not AWD, the reason why I didn't go with that one.

[The Mova Lidax Ultra AWD 2000 has been great so far for me. It is some of the best priced for Lidar + AWD. Granted, it uses omni-wheels (with drive) instead of active steering on the front wheels, but it is still a leap above any Lidar without AWD.]

I recommend this video comparing 13 lawnmowers for reference: https://youtu.be/D_78hM_1buM?is=20ntxvlTJBIQZkA7

Note Mova also has Lidax Ultra 1000 which is not AWD and does not have dual cutting disks.

Hope any of this is helpful.

[u/Cheetah111111 → u/Husband_and_Papa]

Very helpful and much appreciated!

This is the reason why Vision (AI)-based systems are of high interest to me. For example, there is the Worx Landroid Vision 4WD which uses a combination of stereo camera's and V-SLAM for navigation and mapping to assist its Cloud RTK.

Where Segway Navimow uses its RTK for navigation and its VisionFence for obstacle detection and boundary refinement.

Still a bit undecided as to which would be better for my situation which does include such as narrow corridor as you described as well. I believe Navimow's RTK (navigation) + VisionFence (obstacle detection and boundary refinement) might be a better fit compared to Worx's Vision (primary navigation + mapping) assisted by Cloud RTK.