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by ama5322 1484 days ago
It's kind of interesting that this happens given how relatively old robot vacuums are nowdays. The robot getting wedged into high or low obstacles is a pretty common issue.

The expensive robots added lidar sensors for better navigation, but the basic obstacle sensing mechanisms hasn't really improved: front/side sensor, bumper, + cliff sensors for falling (and these last ones aren't 100% foolproof either).

A front camera doesn't really help these robots IMHO (roomba, cough). Nice gimmick, but unless you reach 99% reliability, you'll still see your robot squishing dog poop, falling, wedging itself into the sofa..

I guess it's a nasty tradeoff between robustness, service lifetime, and cost.

I bought a cleaning robot a year ago (totally recommended btw), and I also went the route to adapt the furniture and placement of things to help the robot.

1 comments

Roombas could definitely be better. Mine gets stuck all the time. The reason I keep using it, however, is that it cleans a lot of stuff prior to getting stuck, so it still feels worth it to me.