Some more projects here: https://hackaday.com/blog/?s=lawnmower
Maybe skip the first one (running DooM on your lawnmower), I don't think that will help.
Speak for yourself. I need my lawn mower angry enough to cut down trees.
Torn. This is clearly a cool idea, and it would save a lot of work (which I would immediately offset with all the work putting it together) But then it will be that much easier to keep a traditional lawn going, which I'd love to get away from over the long term.
That's a great point I didn't even think about. It would be a lot of work up front but it would be much cheaper and less maintenance for me to dig up the grass and plant native plants like clover.
Of course don't let me dissuade you. My wife would much prefer a robo mower with "normal" lawn over a no-lawn solution
The biggest hurdle I've ran into is that GPS resolution just isn't accurate enough. If you want something that can follow a planned route without having to rely on a bunch of obstacle avoidance (which is difficult enough in itself) then you'll have to set up some sort of local RTK in conjunction with the GPS.
Currently I'm just setting my mower up like a FPV drone that I can drive around remotely from the comfort of air conditioning. Hoping someone comes out with a good automated solution.
You can root the Gardena gateway and control their mowers locally with this: https://github.com/andrexp/gardena-local-control
I don't think they have mowers with GPS though. Also, some of their mowers don't use the gateway.
Ardumower is the one I've always intended to roll with. Eventually lol. The original nav method is a buried perimeter wire, but they do offer a GPS-RTK kit.
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