So, the first winter with my new yarbo is reaching its end (in some months). I thought I would write about some of the problems i've had and suggestions on how to fix them and things i'd like to see in a future version.
It might sound like I'm an unhappy customer, but that is not the case, I'm really impressed by Yarbo and excited to see what might evolve in the ecosystem.
It's super impressive to see how much snow Yarbo can push through, especially straight ahead. Turning creates problems, and that's what most of the following is about.
English is not my first language, please be patient with me and ask for clearifications if needed.
So these are things that can be solved with software updates.
I think the logik now is that yarbo always tries to turn towards the unmoved area, which has its own problems. In cold snow it works, and Yarbo performs a smal cleanup halfway through the rotation. However, in heavy snow Yarbo has to bulldoze the snow with the side of the snowblower unit, where he sometimes digs down and gets stuck.
However, when Yarbo reaches a border he will still use the same logic, if the aria is getting wider on the unmoved side this works, but if its getting more narrow, then yarbo will rotate the snowblower unit into a wall of snow and get stuck. Then he will raise the snowblower unit and push forward, getting more stuck in the wall of snow outside the border.
The solution would be to always rotate away from the border. One could imagine that reversing and then rotating would fix the problem, but that dosen't work when the border is close to perpendicular to the moving direction.
So, the problem is that when Yarbo starts the work, he cleans the border. Which is necessary to give him a place to rotate. However, that means he is creating a tunnel in snow for himself which limits his ability to turn. (buldozer with snowblower and back of the outer track). My suggestion would be to limit the maximum rotation angle to about 45 degrees. and if the rotation is greater than that, first clean to the corner, reverse one yarbo length, rotate 45 degrees, cut at that angle till you reach the border, rotate the rest, reverse a little back into the edge of the corner, then continue along the border.
It's a bit hard to explain in words and I'm not a graphics guy so I can't animate, but the purpose is to cut a chunk out of the edge created in the corner and thereby avoiding a situation where Yarbo gets stuck when he can’t push snow to the side during rotation.
The border is often the worst part of the area when it comes to snow dept, since wind will collect the snow agains the unmoved wall of snow.
It would be helpful to be able to do multiple border passes in heavy snow conditions to help yarbo clear a free zone to rotate. thereby avoiding getting stuck from situations similar to the one described in “Limited border rotation”. Even though Yarbo almost always solves these problems, since he can do escape manuvers into the cleared area, it's a lot of rotations to be performed, so sometimes that dosen't work. (and i'd rather assist Yarbo in heavy conditions during two or tree border passes than during the whole area)
I would like to be able to activate a different turning logic, where yarbo spend more time moving while turning instead of one point rotating. In heavy snow conditions and during wheet snow where the snow gets capable of carrying the yarbo, a small bump can result in a area where yarbo don't get down to a hard surface. When Yarbo rotates in these conditions, he grinds through the snow and gets hanging on his belly. I would be happy to sacrifice some moving time in exchange for a rotation strategy where he rotates while reversing. Moving forward to clear some space in the unmoved area, reverse while rotating again, and finally moves forward rotating and clearing till he is aligned with the moving direction (I think Yarbo does the last part of this strategy currently, where he moves forward with a slight angle towards the uncleared area, till he gets full width in the snowblower and then straightens up.)
This is somewhat similar to “Limited border rotation” but with another purpose and regarding the whole area. (I haven't tested the one direction snow clearing that's newly released, that might solve this issue )
I'm quite sure we will need a similar solution for the lawn to avoid maring it upp, but I haven’t testet the lawnmover yet so I don't know if that is true.
Imagine a road with houses on both sides, when clearing that road yarbo has to change the side where he throws the snow. When doing this he segments the area into small subareas, and clears them one by one. This is fine, but I would like Yarbo to overlap 2 feet or so because as it is now, there is a line of small snow piles where he rotates because he dosen't fully empty the auger before he turns.
Currently I split my yard up to do this manually, but it would be nice to not have to do that.
There’s quite a few spots where Yarbo gets stuck on my property because of non optimal rotation positions. if I could rotate the moving lines I could solve some of those issues, (and make Yarbo leave a prettier result )
Currently there is “Paralell” “Circle” and the new “slope” Route patterns.
I would like to see a pattern where I can draw two lines, and all rotation will happen at those lines. So if I have a uneven square shaped area, I could draw the snow throwing direction on the bottom line, and then mark the right and the left line as rotation edges.
The logic to draw the lines on the map would be to take the snow throwing direction line and the opposing line (we might want to alternate sides to throw snow), and duplicate those inwards in the square till the whole area is covered, and importatly, if the square has a narrow section, The lines should follow the edge around that narrow part and then continue on the other side till it connects to the rotation edge.
It’s up to the User to make sure that there is always a snow throwing direction infront of Yarbo, if there is none, throw the snow towards the unmoved area.
This is somewhat similar to the circle logic. but it wont rotate wherever it connects to an edge and it wont segment the area if there are multiple different snowthrowing directions.
This would make it possible to clear hard areas with slopes and other hinderences that could mess with a rotation in the wrong place. And it would leave much nicer edges since yarbo would only rotate where we choose to.
This is new hardware I would like to see.
This is an old suggestion of mine, to have a cable like an old robotic lawn mover, but instead of marking the whole border, let us place a line that Yarbo can follow from a set location to the dock (under a roof).
I write it again because the Bluethoot addition to the new yarbo might make it possible to create an accessory that can be attached to the yarbo, and the line powered separately, without other hardware changes.
so yarbo could park at a designated location in front of the dock where gps dosen't work. Then the bluetooth accessory could guide yarbo while slowly reversing till the end of the cable that is located in under the dock where yarbo can detect the charging station and start charging.
If there will ever be a new model, I would like one that has more space between the ground and Yarbos belly, since all track slippage is caused by snow packing under the belly till the tracks hang in the air.
I would also like to see tracks that would maximize the current available height, but I bet that will mess with the wireless charging…
I would like to see a weight pack for yarbo. Honestly I've been experimenting with one that attaches to the handles, but a dedicated yarbo backpack would improve traction a lot.
I'm not sure why this was not a requirement to start with. There's no one operating the yarbo and that would make the moving patterns a lot easier to get perfekt…
If the snow blower had a built in rotation (30-45degree) that would make yarbo a lot more capable of turning in deep snow. Currently yarbo has a hard time both rotating into an uncleared snow area and it's hard to rotate out again if it's deep snow, and that's even worse during edge clearing, since there's snow on both sides. If the snow blower unit rotated slightly, that would do a lot to help when turning since the uncleared snow would push against the leading edge of the snow blower unit and thereby guiding it into the turn.
Summary
Thats the end of my suggestions for now. I wasent sure if I would create seperat topics for each one to make voting easier. But i figured I didnt want to spam the Community, perhaps you can upvote and write the title for the improvement you like to give the Yarbo team a heads up if something is importat for more people than me.