Mova’s lawn bots ditch perimeter wire and map your grass in 3-d, prices from €579

First we stopped sweeping, then we quit mopping; now Mova wants mowing off the chore list. The Chinese start-up, already the planet’s top shipper of LiDAR-guided grass bots, unveiled three new lines overnight that promise to map any garden—rocky, sloped or kid-strewn—without a single perimeter cable.

The number on the box tells you how big your lawn can be

ViAX 250, LiDAX Ultra 2000, LiDAX Ultra AWD: the digits equal the maximum square metres the robot can handle on one charge. Prices open at €579 for the entry ViAX and scale to €1 599 for the goat-like AWD that climbs 80 % gradients and 6 cm stones.

All three families share the same core philosophy: let light, not wire, define the edge. Dual Ultra-HDR cameras feed an onboard neural net trained on 300 obstacle types—cats, croquet hoops, gnomes—detected up to 70 m away. When the lens spots flesh, blades stop; if it clocks a rock, the bot shaves closer.

Lidar at night, 4g when the garden is the size of a vineyard

Basic ViAX models rely on camera vision only; anything above 500 m² adds a 360° LiDAR dome that still works in rain or pitch black. The 2 000 m² flagship carries an eSIM; lose Wi-Fi behind the rose hedge and 4G keeps the map alive. Firmware updates arrive over the air, so the boundary you drew in the app last week won’t be tomorrow’s software relic.

Mova’s engineers abandoned the industry crutch of RTK beacons. Instead, a single pass “teaches” the garden to the bot in centimetre-level detail; keep the flower beds, mark the herb patch off-limits, schedule a Monday diagonal stripe if that pleases your inner groundskeeper.

Why this matters the week europe swelters

Water-use fines are landing in Madrid and Rome; taller grass shades roots and sips less. Yet local services charge €40 a cut. A mid-range LiDAX Ultra amortises in one suburban summer, then runs on 4 kWh a month—less than a single laundry cycle.

Mova won’t disclose shipment figures, but sector data show LiDAR lawn robots outsold traditional random-bounce models for the first time in Q2. With today’s launch the company covers every price tier from balcony to boutique vineyard, and the patent file hints at a flying indoor sibling—code-named Pilot 70—already clearing attic dust in Shenzhen labs.

Bottom line: the last analogue blade still spinning in the smart home is about to go autonomous. If your Saturday still smells of two-stroke petrol, the escape hatch just opened—starting at €579, no wiring required.