Can I still create stripes in the lawn with a robot lawn mower?

Not for most robot lawn mowers. Stripes are created by the rollers on the back of mowers.  Robot mowers don’t have rollers and don’t cut in parallel lines except mowers which use the GPS RTK system.  These mowers will give the appearance of stripes but they are not comparable to the quintessentially British lawn look.

Most perimeter wire robot mowers mow in a random pattern i.e. they set off in a straight line and when they turn ( due to the edge of the lawn or an obstacle), they turn in a random direction and set off again.  The Ambrogio range of mowers use technology (mainly GPS) to try and ensure that they don’t cut the same area twice for a number of days to ensure more efficient cutting. Some mowers cut in spirals when they sense particularly long grass.

RTK robots will mow in straight lines, however creating overlapping schedules whereby the robot cuts at different angles is generally the bets practice to achieve the best quality lawn.

If you want stripes, manual mowing with a roller based machine is still the only way to achieve this look. We have sites where the striped look is still desired. Robot mower complement this, but dealing with the waste, reliably cutting often enough, reducing fertilisation needs and hugely reducing the times required to stripe the lawn.