UBTECH, Ninebot and Dreame mowing robots compete, igniting the battle in the tens of billions of US dollars market | HardcoreTech Directly Hits CES

Author｜Huang Nan

Editor｜Yuan Silai

In the past year, the robotic lawn mower track has continued to heat up. Due to its advantages in economy, efficiency, and convenience, as well as the promotion of automated operations and users' intelligent needs, robotic lawn mowers have become the new favorite in European and American courtyards.

As the main manufacturing country of robotic lawn mowers, in the recently held CES 2025, various brands have successively released their new smart robotic lawn mowers. The crowdfunding amounts of products from companies such as UBTECH, Changyao Innovation, and others have exceeded one million.

Looking at the scene, the exhibited enterprises can be divided into two categories: One is companies such as Ninebot, Songling, and Ecovacs, whose products already have a certain market share, and they release a series of new products based on the previous generations.

Ninebot launched the Navimow X3 series, which improves the ratio of mowing area to charging time through technologies such as fast charging, large-sized cutter head, and faster running speed; Songling released the LUBA mini AWD suitable for small lawns and complex terrain scenarios, which can handle complex terrain with a slope of up to 80%; Ecovacs exhibited the GOAT A series and O series, and its GOAT A3000 LiDAR adds dual LiDAR on the RTK perception system, making the recognition, navigation, and obstacle avoidance capabilities more accurate.

Ninebot Navimow X3 series (Image source / Enterprise)

The second category is newly entered companies such as UBTECH, Anker, and MOVA, which expand new business lines based on the original technology stack. UBTECH's UBHOME smart lawn mower M10, which was first released at CES 2025, adopts its self-developed autonomous environmental perception, SLAM, and autonomous navigation technology; Anker Eufy equipped its first lawn mower with LED headlights and an automatic defogger to meet the light requirements of the equipment for nighttime or low-light operations; MOVA and Hesai jointly exhibited the MOVA 1000, which is equipped with a Hesai mini LiDAR JT16 and has high-precision three-dimensional environmental perception capabilities.

In this global carnival of emerging consumer electronic products, one can sense the competitive atmosphere among brands. The industry consensus is that compared to traditional wired robotic lawn mowers, smart robotic lawn mowers are the trend.

The products of robotic lawn mowers have shown characteristics such as diversified SKUs and personalization, which also puts forward higher requirements for how manufacturers can achieve precise local operations during the process of going global. Enterprises need to establish more competitive barriers beyond technology.

Mainstream Technical Solutions

For European and American families, lawn mowing is a long-standing necessary task.

Statista once released a set of data. There are approximately 250 million courtyard gardens worldwide, of which 100 million are concentrated in the United States, and 80 million are scattered in various regions of Europe. The lawn culture has continued to this day. 77% of European and American families regularly carry out courtyard activities. The average family trims the lawn 2 to 3 times per month, and more than 227 million Americans own lawn maintenance and gardening tools.

Behind this frequent demand, a lawn mower market with a scale of tens of billions of dollars has emerged. According to Grand View Research statistics, In 2021, the global lawn mower market size reached 30.4 billion US dollars, with the home use scenario accounting for 70%; China Economic Information Service predicts that by 2027, the global lawn mower market size is expected to reach 44.1 billion US dollars.

Among them, the traditional wired lawn mowers and manual push-type or ride-on lawn mowers that rely on human power have a relatively large shipment volume. The borderless smart robotic lawn mower is still in the early stage of the market, with North America and Europe as the main markets, and the market share ratio of intelligent and traditional wired products is less than 1:10.

"The global shipment volume of borderless products in 2024 does not exceed 300,000 units. The homogeneity of similar products in the market is serious, with a massive marketing investment. 'Brand education' has become 'category education', but in fact, there are not many manufacturers that can actually ship products, and there are still a lot of opportunities." Hu Yue, the founder of Changyao Innovation, told Yingke.

Airseekers TRON (Image source / Kickstarter)

In fact, since 2024, the crowdfunding amounts of several lawn mower projects have exceeded one million, and many products have been exhibited at this CES 2025.

Changyao Innovation's AIRSEEKERS TRON and Tron Max products have achieved a monthly pre-sale amount of over 2.2 million US dollars on the Kickstarter platform, with the first batch of orders exceeding 1,500 units. The delivery of the first batch of crowdfunding orders has been completed successively, and overseas independent website sales have been launched recently. The expected pricing of the first product is above 2,000 US dollars.

The YUKA series robotic lawn mower of Mammotion, a sub-brand of Songling, had a crowdfunding amount of over 2.2 million US dollars in 2024.

UBTECH's UBHOME M10 launched a crowdfunding campaign in November 2024 and started mass production. It has raised nearly 200,000 US dollars, equivalent to over one million yuan in RMB. It mainly targets the mid-to-high-end user market. Currently, this product has officially landed on platforms such as Amazon for sale, with a price of 1,799 US dollars.

CES 2025 UBTECH UBHOME M10 booth (Image source / Enterprise)

The crowdfunding achievements of these products prove that the borderless smart robotic lawn mower has sufficient potential. However, it must be noted that this product is still in the early stage, and several technical routes are still in the process of competition.

Different from traditional lawn mowers, the difficulty of the borderless smart robotic lawn mower lies in the influence of non-standard outdoor environmental factors, including complex terrains such as lawns and gentle slopes, direct sunlight, haze, rainy days, and the avoidance of people and animals, which will affect the positioning accuracy and thus lead to poor mowing results.

The current common solution is to use positioning solutions such as RTK (Real - time kinematic, real-time dynamic carrier phase differential technology), multi-sensor fusion, LiDAR plus visual SLAM, and through deep learning visual obstacle avoidance technology, to allow the machine to plan the path independently. Users only need to remotely control the operation through the mobile phone App to start, monitor, and stop the mowing task, without the need for manual participation or supervision.

Hu Yue pointed out that although the RTK solution performs well in some scenarios, such as higher positioning accuracy in open fields, its limitations are also very obvious. RTK equipment includes base stations and brackets, which are large in size and have a high transportation cost. In some specific scenarios, such as when there are many obstructions under the courtyard trees, RTK positioning is prone to loss, resulting in map reconstruction and affecting the user experience. It can be said that for novice users, there is still a certain learning threshold, and it cannot be used immediately after purchase.

In contrast, the pure visual solution is more convenient to use and only needs to be simply activated. Therefore, many manufacturers have chosen to use an integrated solution of RTK or LiDAR plus vision. For example, the Navimow X3 series released by Ninebot at CES 2025 adopts the combination of RTK and vision technology, which can achieve centimeter-level high-precision positioning and maintain a stable positioning ability even in complex scenarios.

CES 2025 Ninebot Navimow X3 series booth (Image source / Enterprise)

UBTECH's UBHOME smart lawn mower M10 adopts its self-developed autonomous environmental perception, SLAM, and autonomous navigation technology, and is connected to the Qualcomm Robotics RB1 platform. The RB1 built-in machine vision technology provides edge-side intelligence. Without the need for pre-buried boundary lines, UBHOME can sense the courtyard environment, select the operating range, and complete the weeding of complex terrains such as steep slopes. At the same time, the UBHOME lawn mower is also equipped with a built-in LoRa communication module design, which can support a large-scale signal connection of 138,000 square meters.

UBTECH UBHOME M10 (Image source / Enterprise

Currently, each of the several routes has its own advantages and disadvantages, but for Chinese companies, technical problems in the hardware aspect rarely pose an obstacle. For this kind of large product, the real test for Chinese companies going global is the offline channel operation ability.

Localized Operations, Seizing High-Quality Channels

From the exhibition site, the robotic lawn mowers are showing rich SKUs and diversified and personalized characteristics, mainly due to the influence of different regional demands for technology, product forms, and other factors.

For example, the lawn grass in Europe is relatively delicate with a moderate growth rate, and there are higher requirements for the cutting efficiency and precision of the lawn mower; in contrast, the grass in North America is coarser with a faster growth rate, especially in the peak season, where the lawn needs to be mowed 2 to 3 times per month, and there are higher requirements for the high power, high efficiency, and durability of the lawn mower.

At the same time, the lawn area in Europe is relatively small, usually between 300 and 500 square meters, with a relatively flat terrain and regular boundaries. The lawn mower needs to have a better obstacle avoidance ability and path planning ability to adapt to the compact courtyard space; the lawn area in North America is larger, usually between 600 and 1,000 square meters with irregular boundaries and diverse terrain, including flat lawns and slopes, requiring the lawn mower to have a good climbing ability and adaptability.

Therefore, this also means that there is still a lot of room for exploration in the product end of the robotic lawn mower, requiring enterprises to provide a richer product line selection and make personalized adjustments for specific scenarios.

For example, the MOVA 1000 is equipped with a dedicated off-road wheel on the hardware end, which has a stronger grip and is not easy to slip when mowing on a slope terrain. At the same time, the off-road wheel is more wear-resistant, improving the durability of the product. In its standard mode, it can complete the mowing of 800 square meters in one day, and in the efficient mode, the daily mowing area can reach 1,200 square meters.

MOVA robotic lawn mower (Image / Enterprise)

Ecovacs GOAT G1's efficient cutting, precise positioning, and intelligent obstacle avoidance functions have previously captured many courtyard users in the European market; the GOAT A3000 LiDAR released at CES 2025 is targeted at the characteristics of large lawns in North America. It is equipped with a 32V large power battery, coupled with a double cutter head and LELS positioning technology, which can increase the working efficiency of the robotic lawn mower to three times that of the first-generation lawn mower.

CES 2025 Ecovacs booth site (Image source / Enterprise)

"Next, there will be more and more lawn mower SKUs for different usage scenarios in the market, which also greatly tests the localized operation capabilities of each company and whether they can accurately grasp the differentiated needs of local users." Xu Feng, an investor focusing on going global hardware, told Yingke.

In addition to household robotic lawn mowers for small courtyards, in the future, there may be commercial robotic lawn mowers for large courtyards, custom robotic lawn mowers for special environments, etc. "These products will better meet the personalized needs of users in multiple regions." Xu Feng said.

In the sales end, unlike 3C and lightweight electronic consumer products, the robotic lawn mower is an offline experience-type product. Due to its high unit price and significant differences in the usage experience, users are more inclined to try it in the store before purchasing, with a short transaction process and more guaranteed after-sales service.

The offline channel plays an important role in the user's purchase decision-making. Therefore, the brand side needs to have a strong channel network resource and a flexible after-sales response service.

"Due to the large number of European countries and the scattered offline channels, whoever can seize the high-quality service providers and distributors first will have an inherent advantage in the local area. In contrast, the United States is a unified market with a large overall volume and a higher ROI ratio. The language, cultural system, policies, etc. between states are basically the same. The more common cooperation method is that the channel directly supplies to retailers, and the enterprise only needs to negotiate and interface directly with the channel." Zheng Jie, an investor focusing on the intelligent hardware and robotics field, once told Yingke.

CES, as a large-scale exhibition that gathers global consumer electronic products, attracts tens of thousands of channel merchants every year, becoming an important channel for many emerging brands to expand the market and seek high-quality partners. Since the second half of 2024, some