I really wanted this Yarbo robot snowblower to work...

Not a fair test. You'd be naive to think the snow blower would work in like +5 degrees conditions it looks like. Wet snow like that? Come to Canada. And yah, here I am wondering if Yarbo would work, but you have to think for success. You need to have Yarbo running several sorties during a heavy snowstorm, as an example of how to have it succeed. Anyways, thanks for the video, but I thought you were trying something impossible right from the start. Never let facts get in the way of the truth.

These things should only have one mode: see snow, plow snow. I don't give two wits about snow conditions, whether there is dirt or gravel, ground is too low or high, weight distribution, etc... This reminds me greatly of early days of 3D printing, in which the machine itself was the hobby, not the act of printing.

Wet and heavy is a challenge regardless what snow blower it is

How much does it weigh? Maybe it's just too lightweight for what you need it to do? Maybe that's why plows are so heavy

3500$, wow that's insane

It is simply undersized and underpowered. Boiling down to your clearance and lifting capability.

It would be fine for a development cul-de-sac driveway and sidewalk. It just doesn't have the mass needed for traction.

Looks like a snowblower designed by some dropout techbros in a conference room that have never seen an actual snowblower in person, and have never experienced snow in person, and only seen pictures of both

The only thing I can assume is the Impeller gear torque is not sufficient if it is then it should unstuck itself by brute force?

With the amount of time it's taken you to try to get that machine to work, you could have bought multiple high end snow blowers, one for each member of the house, and cleared out the driveway in minutes.

far too small and underpowered for 99% of winter conditions.
Its good for that 1% of fluffy light snow that you could just use a leaf blower to clear.

The problem with this is that snowblowers are finnicky machines at the best of times. Same with plowing. So offering those modules on a robot is always going to be really tough if it doesn't have it's own ability to instrument what it's doing and adapt to conditions. This is a situation where an AI could probably be trained for the use case and it could work really well. But it would have to be it's own weather station and even if it worked perfectly on pavement it would have a horrible time trying to do your driveway. I do kinda think it was unreasonable to expect this to work well on your particular driveway; you didn't really compare with a battery powered snow blower you were manually controlling over that stuff; you'd still have had a kinda shit time with it.

I really want to see this work. FYI clean it real good and give it a coating of ceramic coat. (edit Oh) That's the next best thing to WD-40 is it lasts longer and it's slicker. Might want to do the outside surfaces too so it doesn't build up. That is the hot new anti-stick snow thing to do.
I did a bit of research on snowblowing apparatuses. They tend to not do well with gravel driveways and you really have to be aware of your depth settings.
Snow is difficult! We have two different snow blowers now one I forget what they call it, it doesn't scrape the ground and that's better for rocky driveways. the other one kind of scrapes more and that's good for smooth paved surfaces. I'm not sure which one that is or if it's just totally adjustable. For that kind of driveway with it being very uneven you're gonna have to be at a higher setting and live with a couple inches of remaining snow. I have not had issues with WD-40 but I'm also not running the newest snow blowers either. I've used it on shovels and not had any issues. Yes it will attract debris but I have not run into that with snow although there are very different kinds of snow.

I think the Yarbo isn't "industrial" enough for your purposes. It's probably more suited to a suburban setting with a nice paved driveway and no gravel/dirt surfaces.

unusable stuff in this weather and place condition))

"emergency stop!" its like his slogan)))

I'm not the biggest fan of robots like this, but to give it a fair chance I would just assume these are made for people who live in the burbs, where 30-60 minutes and the whole yard and driveway are complete, and it's completely flat throughout.
Most of the areas you showed looked like hard mode x10 for this little robot, lol.

Either way, great content as always!

It needs to be bigger and heavier, then it would work better.

What a garbage machine 😂

Those tracks just don’t seem like the right type of tracks for snow. I would expect them to look more along the lines of snowcat tracks to actually be fit for purpose. Also, it should not be programmed to try to point turn in snow with a big attachment sticking out past the front of the tracks.

You'd get better chance of success to add some remote control to that plowing car

This feels like a "mini"-version, for very light/fresh snow. I feel you'd need a robot at least twice the size lol

Seems only made a suburban house with concrete driveways. The guard looks totally usless. But a snowblower 2x the size would still be undersized for what you have. You'd need something that uses like the all turain wheelchair parts with a much larger and more powerful auger.

I'm curious if Yarbo had an early iteration of the blower that used rubber paddle style blades found on many single stage snow blowers that are plenty capable at removing wet snow at slow speeds. The 2-stage auger setup they produced appears aggressive and capable, but from what I've seen doesn't seem to deliver on those looks. My hope is that something like the Yarbo will become adopted by communities to automate sidewalk clearing around schools and bus stops for pedestrians the same way we have the public service that plows streets. 🖖

for where you live it is a shite robot

Oh that poor thing is so pitiful :)

I think this video is really well done, and I do appreciate that Yarbo has been working with you extensively to get it working. My hope is that future revisions will be significantly improved for more adverse conditions - perhaps this machine just needed more testing in a greater range of conditions. Projects like this are cool and have real utility for lots of people, so I want to see Yarbo succeed!

And I really appreciate you keeping it transparent Scotty!

It's not really much different from those lawnmower robots, a lot more flexible as it can do more, but at the same point it suffers from the same problems which is that very few yards are actually green constructed to be "perfect". With perfect I mean that it's flat, there's fine flat concrete driveway at most that doesn't cut through the greenery, there's clean shapes and not just a bush that has overgrown the last couple decades, there's no muddy places after a rain, and, you know, the "perfect TV show suburban yard". You got a normal yard that hasn't been completely constructed, they just don't work that great.


If it was more like Goliath "tank" (tracked mine to be exact) that has the tracks running all around it giving it much greater climbing height, better track system than basicly rubber belt (like through the track teething or similar that guarantees the track is going to break before it can slip), more aggressive tracks, pretty much we are talking about beefing it up from sweet little yard robot that will mow your lawn while you sip margarita while sunbathing under your pergola in your fine suburb into a tank that will mow down your house if not monitored, is noisy, clinks and clanks around, and requires at least couple mines worth of lithium to just have hour of battery life.

Its not heavy and powerfull enough for moving snow on the gravel.
I think its more made for a concrete driveway with 4" of loose snow and nothing more.
Not even the minidumper you have can move snow on the gravel without getting stuck. And specialy not when its not frozen. It can get enough traction to move anything.
The belt dosnt grip enough and is just distibuting the weight of the machin.
It looks like a great machine. But i think it would be better to cut the grass than anything els.

I don't think that such a small device is intended for such an application. I think Yarbo left it to you, to gain experience in extreme situations. The device is intended for driving up to the garage in rural areas. Someone who lives in the mountains and has to clear his road with a snow clearing vehicle, doesn't normally look for lawn mowers with additional functions.

I think a big part of the issue is the changing elevation on your property. That's not your fault and it seems to me like it could be addressed in software provided it had the ability to sense its pitch with an integrated gyroscope chip.

If it were able to map out the areas where the terrain has challenging spots and changes in elevation then it could automatically lift the blade for those areas but that's a feature they'd have to put a lot of time into developing.

I don't believe it's realistic for this company to expect the user to follow the bot around adjusting the blade for any changes in terrain that it might face. That needs to be automatic if it's to live up to the expectations they are obviously marketing the product to meet.

And that's why you don't do sponsored videos where approval is required. Doesn't look good for either party.

Who's all the young guys you have helping once in a while? Local kids from a school or?

I think the yarbo would have been significantly better if it had a gas or diesel powered blower attachment it needs the weight and torque to truly eat through that snow

This is overpriced junk! I am happy i didn´t bought one. Better to use a proper snowblower.

Maybe not for snow management, but I’m curious to see how helpful it is with other tasks

Just use a plow you would have been done

I think this is defintly a very extreme scenario to put the robot through, I personally thought it did pretty well under the circumstances. Hopefully Yarbo takes this back to the frawing baord to make a more robust and ruggized model.

That robot needs to be the same size as a standard snow blower that a human would operate. It’s too small

$7500!!!
I'd rather pay myself and do the job than spending it on that!

Man i love your honesty, your word holds alot of weight! Legend! Man i miss your japan videos!!!

I have one, it kinda sucks in wet snow. Wait till its frozen at night. Some have had luck with ceramic coatings in wet snow.

Do you need protection from the sun at that height above the sea?

I'm glad this was an honest review in the end. The previous video on this machine seemed very much like you were shilling for them, and I was a little worried. Happy to be proven wrong though

Clasic example of yet another product designed and manufactured by someone (on a computer and in lab conditions) who has never actually used it(in the real world)!

I really appreciate your honest review and all of the effort you put into the Yarbo to get it to function. The price is high for me but beyond that, it defeats the purpose of purchasing an autonomous device for the purposes of having it do tasks you simply would prefer not to have to do, only to have to spend a lot of time switching out implements and making adjustments. If they really want it to function well, Yarbo should go back to the drawing board and address the obvious design flaws in a device that is meant to be multifunctional. I would look at giving it 3 or for tracks to ride on with a higher ground clearance to start out with. They suggested WD-40 then say you shouldn't use it.... their support team needs to be on the same page. I'd love to have an affordable autonomous device that could mow in the summer months, clear leaves in the fall and clear snow in the winter (not that much snow in NC) but I wouldn't pay that kind of money for one that requires so much of my time just to keep it doing the jobs it was supposed to be designed to do. Great videos on it though. I was really wanting to see it work well too.

The reason they tell you to use WD-40 is that it is Water Displacement number 40.

Sorry for the delay in uploads! We had to delay for quite a bit for some back and forth with Yarbo about the past two videos. We'll be back to our weekly schedule going forward.

Yarbo asked me to include this message:

Hi everyone — just a quick note from Team Yarbo 👋🏻
Huge thanks to Scotty and the team for such an honest and thoughtful review. This test was filmed under some pretty specific conditions, and while the snow blower wasn’t used in its ideal setup, we still learned a lot from the experience.
If you’re tackling heavy, sticky snow like this, here are a few quick tips that might help:
• Remove the chute guard for better snow discharge
• Avoid using WD-40 — a ceramic spray works better in these cases
• On soft ground, raise the auger a bit to prevent dirt clogging
We’re constantly listening and improving, and we appreciate everyone who supports independent creators like Scotty. Thanks again for watching!
— Team Yarbo