I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting a yard robot to be one of the more entertaining things I’d get my hands on at IFA 2026. Then I walked over to Yarbo’s booth and started playing around with the M Series.
The basic idea is wonderfully simple: instead of buying a different robot for every outdoor chore, Yarbo gives you one tracked robotic Core and a collection of attachments. Swap the module, and suddenly your robot has a completely different job. Mowing? Yep. Snow? Yep. Leaves? Yep. And there’s even a trimmer module on the way.
One robot, several very different jobs
The indoor booth in Hall 9 was essentially a playground for this idea. I got to poke around the M Series, try out the quick-connect attachment system and, more importantly, actually get my hands on the different modules. Yarbo had the Mower, two-stage Snow Blower and Collector on display, alongside prototypes of the upcoming Line Trimmer and Smart Assist modules.
And the module swapping really is the fun bit. It feels less like changing an accessory on a lawn mower and more like giving a little tracked robot a new personality. One minute it’s ready to chew through your lawn, and the next it’s dressed up for winter.
The other part that made the booth considerably more fun was getting some hands-on time with the robots themselves.
The Xbox controller made the whole thing click
There were one or two machines being controlled with an Xbox-style controller, and naturally, that immediately turned a serious-looking yard-care demonstration into something that felt suspiciously like a video game. The controls were straightforward enough to pick up quickly, and watching the tracked Core shuffle around under my command made it pretty obvious that Yarbo isn’t building another little puck-shaped robot mower.
This thing has some attitude.
The tracked design gives it a much more purposeful presence, and Yarbo has built the M Series to deal with slopes, uneven surfaces and small obstacles rather than expecting your garden to look like a freshly manicured golf course. The whole platform is designed around wire-free navigation too, using technologies including NetRTK, vision and, on the M20i, LiDAR.
I also got to see the different M Series configurations up close. The M10 is the smaller option, while the M20 and M20i step things up with bigger batteries and more powerful hardware. The M20i adds LiDAR for trickier environments, including shaded areas where satellite positioning and vision can have a tougher time.
Berlin had other plans for the outdoor test
Yarbo had also set up an outdoor demo area at OCG-137, where the company planned to show the robots dealing with real grass, obstacles and uneven terrain. Unfortunately, Berlin decided to demonstrate its own weather capabilities while I was there. It started raining, and the outdoor demo had to be shut down. So, sadly, I didn’t get to watch the M Series go full off-road in the outdoor arena.
But the indoor experience was enough to give me a pretty good feel for what Yarbo is trying to build. And honestly, that might be the most interesting part of the M Series. This isn’t really about building a smarter lawn mower. Yarbo is trying to turn yard maintenance into a modular robotics problem: one Core, different jobs, depending on what your garden needs that day.
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