• time;2025-07-30 13:44:42

With a gentle press, the courtyard mode is set, and the robot moves at a constant speed along an S-shaped trajectory. Wherever it passes, the grass shavings are evenly spread in a straight line... Chinese brand intelligent lawn mowing robots are becoming powerful assistants for overseas customers to manage rural gardens.

Since the beginning of this year, many companies engaged in the manufacturing of robots or garden equipment, such as No.9 Company, Ecovacs, Greebo, and Daye Co., Ltd., have experienced rapid growth in performance, with overseas sales of intelligent lawn mowing robots becoming a new highlight.

At the recently held 2025 "Foreign Trade Excellence China Tour Jiangsu Station" event, Nanjing citizens were visiting the intelligent lawn mower robot on site.

Why are domestic lawn mowing robots popular overseas? What technological advantages do Chinese companies have? The reporter conducted an interview.

Mowing robots are popular in Europe, America and other places

Hoffman, who lives in Lower Saxony, Germany, said that his lawn area is not small and needs to be cleaned regularly. When buying a lawn mower robot, he compared prices from three different brands and found that European brands were generally overpriced, and after-sales service could not be fully localized. In the end, he chose the Chinese brand Ecovacs.

In Germany, the Ecovacs lawn mower robot already has a stable after-sales system, and its design is very in line with the habits of European users. I also really like the path planning of this robot. For example, it is not a 'random walk', but covers the lawn in a structured way, which is more efficient. My wife said I finally don't have to push the lawn mower every weekend, "Hoffman said.

It is understood that in many countries such as Europe and America, the number of household lawns is relatively large. Since the 1970s, gasoline powered lawn mowers have become a common tool for courtyard maintenance in many areas. But with the increasing awareness of environmental protection and the acceleration of work pace, traditional "gasoline powered+manual push" lawn mowers are gradually becoming unable to meet the demand. This change has brought strong demand for the development of the lawn mowing robot industry, and Chinese related brand enterprises have begun to actively embrace this market.

There are a large number of suburban residential areas in Europe, America, Australia, and other regions with large courtyard areas and low population density. Traditional manual pruning is inefficient and costly, and using intelligent lawn mowing robots can greatly save labor, time, and money expenses. "Zhu Fanghao, Senior Vice President and Head of Eufy Business Unit of Anke Innovation Technology Co., Ltd., said that the use of lawn mowing robots covers residential courtyards, parks, green spaces, and small public landscape areas, which can meet different needs from 200 square meters to 4000 square meters, adapt to different slope scenes, and effectively navigate obstacles such as flower beds, swimming pools, and trees. Moreover, in these areas, lawn maintenance has been integrated into the housing value system, forming a mature consumption environment with high retention rates.

The deepening of population aging, accelerated pace of life, and increasing demand for outdoor space are also important factors driving the growth of demand for lawn mowing robots.

Our GOAT series products have entered many markets such as Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc., and are serving local consumers through more channels. With the intelligent operation experience, related products are very popular. From the perspective of the European market, sales are expected to more than double this year compared to last year. ”Kovos Europe's head, Ahn Jung jun, said.

Electrification, low carbonization, and intelligence are important directions for the development of the industry, and lawn mowing equipment has also evolved from the stage of 'manual pre embedded thread' to 'automation, intelligence, and unmanned', opening up huge growth space for the development of lawn mowing robots, "said Wu Junliang, General Manager of Shanghai Woshi Industrial Co., Ltd., which is expanding its business in the United States. According to relevant predictions, the global market size of lawn mowing robots will reach around 4 billion US dollars by 2028.

Technological breakthroughs significantly optimize user experience

Why can lawn mowing robots produced in China sell well overseas?

Excellent product performance is an important factor. On the Amazon platform, lawn mowing robots produced by Chinese companies have received a lot of praise, with "easy installation and operation", "precise automatic obstacle avoidance", and "excellent performance" ranking in the top three.

In 2018, the lawn mower I bought required laying cables, which was a very time-consuming process. Now, the eufy E18 lawn mower robot produced by Anke can start working directly after charging, and the operation is very simple. It's simply amazing! If new grass grows in the yard that was not present before, it will automatically expand the cleaning area; If the mole digs a hole, it will actively bypass this place. I estimate that developers should be improving the program for the lawn mower robot every week, and I should soon give it a five-star rating! ”An overseas user with the username "A.T.K." specifically uploaded a product "work photo" and wrote a long section of usage experience.

At a distributor conference held in Bologna, Italy, foreign merchants gathered around the AiConic intelligent lawn mower robot produced by Greebo to observe its product performance.

Quilby from Sweden purchased an Aiconic lawn mower robot produced by Greebo through a local distributor this spring. After several uses, he was deeply satisfied with this product. My garden is quite large, and there are some flower beds and areas that robots should not enter. We installed RTK antennas on the roof and set up a mowing range in the garden. I found that its mowing effect is very good, leaving no uncut areas, and the lawn stripes cut are also very beautiful. ”Quilby said.

Behind the overseas users' "buying" is a series of technological innovations and breakthroughs.

Chen Yin, Chairman of Greebo (Jiangsu) Co., Ltd., said that the company's independently developed third-generation lawn mowing robot adopts RTK centimeter level satellite positioning and inertial navigation system, combined with a multi-sensor fusion system composed of visual navigation obstacle avoidance, millimeter wave radar, and ToF depth camera, breaking through the traditional electromagnetic induction technology route. For example, our innovative intelligent algorithms can enable products to flexibly adjust their operating modes according to the characteristics of the site, while reducing grass damage rates and improving energy efficiency by 30%, significantly extending equipment battery life. "Chen Yin said that the direct financing from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's ChiNext board has helped the company increase its investment in AI intelligent system research and development. Nowadays, Greebo has implemented algorithms to run on the local end of robots. Even in an environment without a network, the product can complete basic intelligent judgments such as grass seed recognition and obstacle avoidance, thus better protecting data privacy.

The lawn mowing robot products produced by Weilan Continent, a subsidiary of Company 9, have been exported to more than 30 countries and regions including Germany, France, the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. Our new generation of intelligent lawn mowing robot Segway Navimow X series products are priced much lower than the annual cost of traditional manual mowing, saving users a lot of mowing costs. ”Li Ke, the public relations manager of Company 9, told reporters that the R&D team has significantly improved the positioning accuracy, mowing efficiency, and operational stability of the machine through technological innovations such as increasing its driving speed, increasing the width of the cutterhead, optimizing battery performance, reducing charging time, and configuring a 300 degree angle three camera VSLAM system.

It can be said that breakthroughs in technologies such as LiDAR and borderless navigation have significantly improved the product performance of lawn mowing robots and greatly optimized the user experience. Many new lawn mowing robots now support remote control through mobile apps. Users can individually set the mowing time and area, view real-time work status and maintenance reminders, and other information. ”Wu Junliang said that the acceleration of localization of components such as LiDAR has reduced the overall cost of the machine and pushed down product prices.

A complete industrial chain provides strong support

The overseas revenue and sales of Ecovacs lawn mower robots for the whole year of 2024 increased by 186.7% and 271.7% year-on-year, respectively; At the beginning of this year, Da Ye Group completed the acquisition of German AL-KO company and added an Austrian production base; Kuma Power launches Mini version courtyard mowing robot at the Global Consumer Electronics Show (CES)... Nowadays, Chinese companies are accelerating the expansion of overseas business of mowing robots.

According to data from Qichacha, as of the end of May, there were 177 companies whose names, business scope, brand products, or patent keywords clearly included "lawn mowing robots", with a relatively large number of related companies in Suzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Changzhou, and other places. In interviews, many industry insiders mentioned that the popularity of domestic lawn mowing robots overseas is actually due to the completeness of China's industrial system and the increasing strength of its industrial supporting capabilities.

Recently, Ying Xinsen, the Director of the General Office of Zhejiang Sanfeng Industrial Co., Ltd., has a full schedule with one export meeting after another. During the meeting, he introduced to our reporter some of the reasons why domestic lawn mowing robots are popular overseas: precise positioning, obstacle avoidance perception, drive control, path planning and other technical modules are the key to achieving true automation and intelligence of lawn mowing robots. China has excellent enterprises in a series of sub fields such as laser radar, intelligent algorithms, low pulse motors, and multimodal control.

The electric garden tool series products produced by Zhejiang Sanfeng Industrial Co., Ltd. are exported to more than 60 countries and regions. The picture shows the automatic production line of the company, with the robotic arm operating.

A complete industrial and supply chain not only provides greater innovation space for products, but also makes it easier to achieve industrialization and scale after finding the right path, thereby reducing costs as soon as possible, "said Ying Xinsen. Zhejiang Sanfeng's lawn mowing robot is equipped with high-performance brushless motors and adaptive cutting systems, with positioning accuracy reaching centimeter level, and can automatically adjust mowing speed and path according to lawn area and shape. At present, the main products of the enterprise are priced at around 3000 to 10000 yuan, and they are actively expanding their overseas markets through channels such as the Canton Fair.

In addition to relying on the domestic supply chain system, strong cross-border e-commerce has also brought more overseas growth points for products. For example, cross-border e-commerce platforms such as AliExpress have advantages such as simplified cross regional access, optimized transaction processes, and increased brand exposure. They are helping related enterprises expand their sales scope, accelerate technological upgrades, and establish brand image. Our products can well meet user needs in precise navigation, dynamic obstacle avoidance, edge cleaning, remote control, and other aspects. The first month of overseas sales of Anke E15 and E18 lawn mowing robots exceeded 4000 units. At present, we are actively improving our localized warehousing network and intelligent logistics system, building a multidimensional service system, strengthening our overseas delivery capabilities, and accumulating greater development momentum. ”Zhu Fanghao said.

Experts believe that lawn mowing robots are a microcosm of China's continuous upward and new development in manufacturing. With the increasingly close connection between China and the world economy, there is hope for more and more popular new products similar to "Made in China, Global Bestseller".

Article source: People's Daily Overseas Edition

Reporter: Wang Junling