What stops someone from picking up an unattended robot mower?
A robot mower works for hours on an open lawn, light enough to carry. Which of its alarms, locks and trackers work once it is lifted, and which cost extra?
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Husqvarna lists the Automower 440 iQ at 39 pounds and $4,299.99, and the smaller Automower 410 iQ at 38 pounds, from $2,599.99. Worx lists its Landroid L at 25.8 pounds before the battery goes in. Each is built to work for hours on a lawn with nobody watching, often in view of the street, and nothing holds it down except its own weight.
Makers protect that machine in three ways. An alarm and a lock act on the mower itself. A satellite position fix, which many mowers already carry for navigation, records where it is. A data connection sends that position to the owner’s phone. The three behave very differently once the mower is in the back of someone else’s car.
What the mower does when it is lifted
Segway’s explainer on Navimow anti-theft sets out the sequence. With the lift alarm switched on, “if the mower is being lifted for a few seconds, it instantly starts the alarm and sends a notification to the connected devices.” The alarm is a high-decibel siren that “will ring continuously unless you clear it by entering a special PIN code you have set.” Mammotion’s guide to mower theft describes the same pair on its own machines: a PIN required “to start or restart the mower” and an audible alarm when the mower is lifted or tilted.
Husqvarna adds a check that needs no network at all. Its GeoFence alarm, according to the company’s support page, “acts as a virtual fence” of a defined radius. If the mower is carried outside it, an alarm starts on the mower and the mower goes into sleep mode or turns off. Husqvarna says the alarm “does not require Wi-Fi or mobile connectivity to function.”
These features make a stolen mower loud and useless to the person holding it. Segway’s UK guide to mower theft says that when the wrong PIN is entered too many times, “the mower locks down, rendering it inoperable.” Neither step returns the mower to its owner. That takes two more things: a record of where the mower is, and a way to send that record to the owner’s phone.
The antenna already knows where it is
A mower that works without a boundary wire usually steers by satellite. An RTK GNSS receiver on its body, corrected by a base station or a network service, fixes its position to within a few centimeters so it can follow a mapped lawn. That receiver works whether or not the blades are turning, so a wire-free mower already carries hardware that can tell where it is after it leaves the lawn, as long as it has power.
A mower that follows a buried wire needs no satellite receiver to do its job. The Landroid L ships with 820 feet of boundary wire, and to track one, Worx sells Find My Landroid, a separate GPS and cellular module that fits the WR155 and four other Landroid models.
Term
GNSS and GPSGNSS is the general name for satellite positioning systems, and GPS is one of them. The GPS in a tracking module and the RTK GNSS receiver a wire-free mower steers by both take their position from satellites. RTK adds a correction from a base station or a network service, which is what makes the fix precise enough to follow a mapped lawn.The position still has to reach the owner. Husqvarna’s support page says GPS tracking “requires network connectivity (Wi-Fi or mobile),” that newer mowers update their position every 30 seconds, and that “for Wi-Fi connected mowers, GPS tracking on the map will only work within Wi-Fi coverage range.” A Wi-Fi-only mower carried past the edge of its owner’s network still has its position fix and no way to send it.
Who pays for the connection
For a mower that has left the yard, that network is cellular, and Husqvarna, Mammotion, Segway and Worx each handle its cost differently. Husqvarna builds it in. Its US pages for the 410 iQ and 440 iQ list cellular connectivity beside the alarm, the PIN code, GeoFence and “GPS theft tracking,” and name no data fee.
Mammotion includes a 4G module with most of the mowers its service terms cover, then bills the data after a free period. Those 4G service terms list what the connection carries: “timed operations, start/stop/end operations, battery power query, progress query, operation map query, anti-theft function (location query), FPV yard monitoring.” The free period ranges from three years on the LUBA 3 AWD to one year on the LUBA 2 AWD X and one month on the LUBA mini AWD, and on the YUKA mini 2 the module itself is sold separately. After it ends, Mammotion sells renewals that attach to the mower by serial number, listed at $19.90 for three months.
Mammotion 4G service
Free cellular data by model
| Mower | Free 4G data period |
|---|---|
| LUBA 3 AWD | Three years |
| LUBA 2 AWD X | One year |
| LUBA mini AWD | One month |
| YUKA mini 2 | 4G module sold separately |
Segway splits it by model. Its explainer says the Navimow H2 and other “latest and advanced mowers” have 4G built in, while in the budget models “you need to install Navimow Access+ to enable the anti-theft feature.” Access+ is a 4G module with its own SIM card, and Segway’s UK guide lists it as optional for the Navimow i Series. The same guide says the X3 series carries built-in GPS tracking plus “a dedicated item tracker slot.” Built in or added, the data is metered, in Segway’s words:
The usage of cellular data will incur charges. Initially, there is a free period. After that, you need to recharge your 4G data plan via the app.
Worx sells tracking as a module plus a plan. Find My Landroid includes a year of cellular service that “can be renewed directly from mobile app after expiration,” and Worx lists renewals at $29.99 for one year, $49.99 for two and $99.99 for five. According to Worx, the module “notifies you via the Landroid mobile app if Landroid has been removed from its mowing area” and lets the owner lock the mower from the app.
Worx’s page for the Landroid Vision Cloud WR320 makes the broadest promise of any here. It advertises “24/7 anti-theft protection with continuous monitoring” and says an owner can find the mower from the app if it leaves the property, even when it is switched off. The page names no module and no data plan, and the connections it lists are Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and RadioLink. In Europe, Worx sells a Find My Landroid module for Vision Cloud models that promises the same tracking while the mower is powered off. Which network carries a US WR320’s position once it is past the owner’s Wi-Fi, and whether that service carries a fee, is a question only Worx can answer.
