Lawn Mowing Is Dead. Here’s What Replaces It…

If you’re tired of mowing your lawn every week, this is a robot that does it for you. But unlike other robot lawn mowers, this doesn’t rely on a satellite connection or wires to navigate around your yard.

It is seriously a game-changer, and I’ve been waiting for a robot lawn mower like this for years.

I’m going to share everything you need to know about the ECOVACS GOAT A3000 LiDAR robot lawn mower. I’ll cover its features, installation and setup, mowing performance and obstacle avoidance, and smart home integration. I’ll also share what I like about it, and what could be improved, including a couple things you should know about.

Main Points

Features

Let’s start off with the best feature about the GOAT A3000: No RTK.

Robot lawn mowers traditionally rely on RTK GPS — or even physical boundary wires — to navigate. But, RTK is unreliable and prone to signal loss.

I’ve tested several other robot lawn mowers that relied on RTK, and they would routinely lose satellite connection. This was frustrating, as it meant the robots would just stop mowing mid-task, or be unable to map my yard altogether.

Instead, the GOAT A3000 uses a dual LiDAR system. This consists of a 360° 3D LiDAR on the top of the robot, and a solid-state 3D-Time of Flight (ToF) on the front, plus a camera with AI detection.

The one on top has a vertical 59° field of view, which scans the entire yard and formulates a 3D map for navigation. The one in front specializes in close-distance measurement using laser sensors for mowing along edges and avoiding obstacles.

The AI camera is powered by an 8-core processor, which is meant to help the robot quickly identify objects and navigate around them, like people, pets, furniture, garden hoses, and toys. But I have more to say about its capabilities here later.

Combined, these features are supposed to offer 2 cm precision in navigating your yard, and ensure that the robot moves in a logical, striped pattern.

But most of all, it means the A3000 can operate near walls and fences, or under roofs or large trees without signal interference like you would find on a robot that uses RTK GPS.

The dual LiDAR system is simply easier to setup and more reliable, and I can’t stress that enough. This finally brings the ease of mapping the inside of your home with a robot vacuum and mop, to the outdoors with a robot lawn mower, eliminating so much hassle.

But LiDAR navigation isn’t the only benefit.

It also runs on a powerful 32V platform. This allows the robot to operate with more power and faster rotating speeds, able to cover 400 square meters (4,300 square feet) per hour. It also enables it to climb up a 50% (27°) slope. And, it can climb over a 4 cm (1.6 inch) barrier.

It uses a dual blade, disc-cutting system spinning at 3,000 RPM, similar to a traditional lawn mower. The dual blade setup has a cutting width of 33 cm (13 inches), and is designed to eliminate gaps so you get beautiful lawn stripes.

You can adjust the cutting height in 1 cm increments from 3 cm (1.2 inches) up to 9 cm (3.5 inches), which should cover most lawn types.

It is designed to mow yards up to 3/4 of an acre, which is 3,000 square meters, or 32,000 square feet, making it suitable for medium to large lawns.

The GOAT A3000 is powered by a 5Ah battery with 180W fast charging, able to fully recharge itself autonomously in just 45 minutes by pulling into a charging station.

Unboxing and Setup

Thanks to ECOVACS for sponsoring this video and supporting the channel.

Inside the box you’ll find the robot fully assembled, plus the charging station, power cables, replacement blades, and instruction manuals.

This was the least amount of setup I have ever had to do for a robot lawn mower, and it’s not even close. The robot came fully assembled, so there wasn’t a single thing that I needed to attach or screw into place.

The only physical setup I had to do was choose a location for the charging station, and anchor it to the lawn using the provided ground stakes.

From the ECOVACS app on your phone, you can pair the robot and install any available firmware updates.

After that, you can have the robot map your yard, so it knows where to work. You can have the robot do this automatically, or you can drive it around using a virtual joystick within the app, which only took me about two minutes.

And that was it. You can actually go from unboxing to mowing in under 10 minutes, which is not something I can say of other robot lawn mowers. Installing the firmware update was the longest part.

From the ECOVACS app, you can set mowing schedules and configure multiple zones, including your preferred mowing speed, cutting height, and mowing direction per zone. I really like how you can tell it to change the mowing direction weekly for a healthier lawn.

You can also create no-go zones for areas you want the robot to avoid completely. We have an elm tree with a mulch bed in a corner of our yard, so I created a no-go zone around that so it wouldn’t drive through that small mulch bed.

Smart Home Integration

Most people will probably just create a consistent mowing schedule in the ECOVACS app. But, you can connect the robot to Amazon and Google smart home platforms for voice control.

If you follow the channel, you know that I prefer to use Home Assistant to manage all of my smart home devices in one place.

While there is an official ECOVACS integration for Home Assistant, it does not appear to support the GOAT A3000 at the time of this recording. However, other users report that it does work with some of the older ECOVACS lawn mower models, plus their robot vacuums and mops.

Hopefully this support will be added in the future, but the integration is based on reverse engineering versus a publicly documented API. Still, this is not a deal breaker for me since setting a consistent mowing schedule from the ECOVACS app is good enough for my use case.

What I Like

Dual LiDAR: There are a bunch of things that I like about the GOAT A3000, starting with the dual LiDAR. In my experience, this is a night and day improvement over robot lawn mowers that require RTK GPS. Weak satellite signals are no longer a frustration that I have to deal with.

It did an excellent job mowing the perimeter to ensure everything was cut well. It also did a really good job navigating the swing set in the middle of our lawn, going around and under the slide, and under the swings.

Fast, Easy Setup: I also like how there was really nothing to install beyond placing the charging station — no parts to assemble, and no antenna to mess with. I was able to go from unboxing to mowing in just a few minutes.

Smooth Operation: The operation of this robot is also really nice. It moves in straight, logical lines that result in beautiful lawn stripes, and it has the best turning maneuver of any robot lawn mower that I’ve tested.

Quiet: It’s also super quiet, at just 53 decibels — the quietest of any robot lawn mower I’ve tested — so you can be inside or outside without the annoyance of a loud lawn mower. I wouldn’t mind if all my neighbors had this — no one wants to listen to a lawn mower, especially early in the morning.

Recharging: It also returned to the charging station and docked itself without issue every single time. This may sound like it should be a given, but I ran into docking issues with all other robot lawn mowers that I’ve tested.

What to Improve

Obstacle Avoidance: That’s not to say it’s perfect. The AI obstacle detection and avoidance need to be better.

I placed a soccer ball, toy lawn mower, toy string trimmer, and toy helicopter blade in our lawn, and it bumped into all of them, and ran straight over the helicopter blade multiple times.

The robot would slow down as it approached the soccer ball and toy lawn mower, but then nudge them around. It can’t damage these items, but I would have liked to see it avoid contact with them.

The robot struggled most with low-lying objects. It plowed right through the toy string trimmer, and went right over the toy helicopter blade, and even dragged along as it mowed.

ECOVACS told me that the AI Vision is not height dependent and is able to identify grass vs. non-grass surfaces and small animals like, including a hedgehog.

But, the 3D Time of Flight LiDAR is height dependent, and can only detect obstacles with a minimum height of 10 cm (4 inches). This would explain why it drove over the toy helicopter blade.

When turning around, the robot would bump into anything nearby. It seemed to me that it would benefit from additional sensors on the sides, and perhaps down low in the front and rear.

I also planted myself in front of the robot in a few different positions to see how well it avoided people. I walked in front of the robot as it was mowing and crouched down, and it avoided me just fine.

I then stood in front of it with my feet parallel to the robot’s path of motion wearing flip-flops — which was probably a bad idea — and it looked like it was about to go over my toes, so I lifted my foot up and it bumped against the bottom of my shoe. I’ve subjected myself to a lot of abuse in testing products for this channel, but I’m not ready to lose a toe for it.

To be clear, the robot does have a bumper, and if it bumps into something, it is supposed to reverse and change direction.

I also put my arm out in front of the robot, which it avoided, and then I stood up again, but this time with my feet perpendicular to the robot’s path of motion. It stopped short of my toes, but as it turned to go around my feet it came right up by my toes forcing me to step backward out of concern.

With that said, it did a great job navigating around the rest of my swing set, including under and around a slide, overhead swings, and wooden support beams.

Getting Stuck: The other notable issue was the robot got stuck…twice. It maneuvered its way into a narrow part of our swing set, and got stuck between a fireman pole and ladder. I actually wasn’t upset about this. It’s a tight area and not a common scenario for most yards, and I can always create a no-go zone around it.

But it should be better. When the robot backed into the fireman pole, it just kept spinning its wheels endlessly trying to back through the pole, which wasn’t going to happen. The robot didn’t seem to register that this was a collision, and it didn’t notify me that it was stuck, even though it was.

It should recognize this was a collision event, and if it cannot confidently move out of the way safely, it should just stop in place and send an alert that it is stuck and needs assistance.

The second time it got “stuck” was in our mulch bed. Its wheel dropped down over the edge when turning around, and it sounded an audible alert and sent an app notification that it was stuck and needed assistance. But it never actually got stuck — it moved its way out of the mulch bed all by itself, and then just returned to the charging station.

So, when it was actually stuck it didn’t recognize that it was stuck, and when it claimed that it was stuck, it wasn’t, which was confusing.

Final Thoughts

The dual LiDAR and a 32V energy platform really separate the GOAT A3000 from other robot lawn mowers. These aren’t just tech specs — they actually deliver simpler setup, faster mowing, and increased reliability compared with any other robot lawn mower that I’ve tested.

Avoiding obstacles and handling situations when it gets stuck both need to be improved. It was concerning how close it came to running over my bare toes, which gives me pause about letting my kids play in the backyard when it is mowing.

But, the reality is I would just have it mow during times that we’re not in the yard anyway, so this shouldn’t be a situation that I find myself in.

The dual LiDAR without the need for an RTK antenna made such a difference, and can actually deliver on the promise of giving me time back, letting the robot take care of the yard so I can spend time on other things I rather be doing.

And compared with a traditional, gas-powered lawn mower, there’s no need to deal with oil changes, emissions, or loud noises.

I genuinely think that the GOAT A3000 can be really helpful to families with busy schedules, or the elderly who can no longer work in the yard, or anyone who just enjoys the latest smart home tech.

The ECOVACS GOAT A3000 LiDAR costs $2,999.99, so you’ll just have to decide if that makes sense for your budget.

Let me know what if you think the GOAT A3000 is the "GOAT" of robot lawn mowers down in the comments.

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ECOVACS GOAT A3000 LiDAR: https://amzn.to/3YW6hB9