Why does the mower always go back to charge

Why Does the Mower Return to the Charging Station?

There are several reasons the mower may return to the charging station:

Low Battery

When the battery drops below approximately 20%, the mower automatically returns to the charging station. After charging to approximately 80%, it resumes the active mowing task automatically.

Nighttime

The mower automatically returns to the charging station at night and resumes during the day.

Scheduled Return

When the mower has completed its scheduled mowing task, it returns to the dock and waits for the next scheduled session.

Task Cancelled or Paused

If the user manually pauses or cancels the active task via the app, the mower returns to the dock.

Cannot Find a Path to the Next Zone (the "in-and-out" pattern)

If the mower cannot find a valid path from its current position to the next zone in the task, it returns to the charging station instead of continuing. If the underlying cause persists, this produces a repeating "going in and out" pattern: the mower leaves the dock, fails to find a path, returns to the dock, retries, and fails the same way.

Three causes account for almost all of these cases:

1. A new physical obstacle is blocking the transition between zones. Inspect the route between zones for new obstructions — furniture, a pet bowl, a hose, a garden tool, a fallen branch, etc. Remove the obstruction and observe whether the mower can continue.
2. Obstacle-detection sensitivity is too high. The cameras are misdetecting harmless features (tall grass clumps, shadows, sun glare, reflective surfaces, dark mulch boundaries) as obstacles. Lower the obstacle sensitivity in the app and observe.
3. Localization drift caused by degraded RTK positioning. If RTK correction is weak or intermittent, the mower's position estimate drifts from its true location, so the path it is trying to follow no longer matches the real terrain. Check the RTK base station's LED: solid green means RTK is locked. Any blinking pattern means RTK is not locked and accurate navigation is not possible — fix the RTK connectivity (see [C023] / Network Compatibility Guide / RTK setup articles) before diagnosing path-finding further.

What WiFi/Internet Loss Does NOT Cause

A common misconception is that the mower returns to the charging station when it loses WiFi or internet. This is not how the system works:

• The mower depends on the NTrip server (reached through the charging station's WiFi and the cloud) for real-time RTK positioning correction. Without RTK correction, the mower has no accurate positioning and therefore cannot navigate back to the charging station even if it "wanted" to.
• The mower receives task instructions from the cluster over the same internet path. With no internet, the mower receives no instructions and will not start, continue, or change tasks autonomously.
• The actual behavior when WiFi drops is documented in the System Communication Architecture article: the mower pauses where it is and waits for connectivity to be restored. It does NOT attempt to dock.

If the customer reports the mower repeatedly returning to the dock during active sessions, the cause is one of the five scenarios listed above (Low Battery, Nighttime, Scheduled Return, Task Cancelled, or Cannot Find a Path to the Next Zone), not a network problem. Diagnose the actual cause by checking battery level, schedule, task state, and the route between zones in the BESTMOW app — do NOT recommend WiFi or router troubleshooting based on this symptom.