This robot’s software is designed to enable it to recognize solid pet waste on the floor and steer clear of it. With a competitive price, plus rock-solid performance and intelligent navigation, the Roborock S7 is our new favorite midrange robot vacuum. It demonstrated about the same power to remove sand from hardwood floors (92.8%) as the Roomba S9 Plus (93%) and Neato D7 (95%). Reflects the average time it took the robotic vacuum on its max-clean setting to clean our greater than 600 square foot test room over 3 test runs. This system looks silly, and some people simply can’t stand to watch it.
It will also link up with a Braava Jet M6 robot mop and tell it to go mop once it’s done vacuuming. Roombas before the seventh-generation models do not map out the rooms they are cleaning. Instead, iRobot developed a technology called iAdapt Responsive Cleaning Technology. This relies on a few simple algorithms, irobot vacuum cleaner such as spiraling, room crossing, wall following, and random walk angle changing after bumping into an object or wall. This design is based on MIT researcher and iRobot CTO Rodney Brooks’s philosophy that robots should be like insects, equipped with simple control mechanisms tuned to their environments.
Most robot vacuums are equipped with multiroom cleaning features, which allow the device to clean in zones versus one room at a time. An “edge cleaning” mode makes sure dust and debris are picked up along the perimeter and around furniture. Some machines will also include app-controlled custom cleaning preferences, which allow the user to adjust cleaning modes, power settings, number of cleaning passes, and edge cleaning.
The Roborock couldn’t match the Roomba S9 Plus’ impressive ability to clean up pet hair, but it fared better than most. The S7 wiped hardwood floors completely free of hair and left only a few stray tufts on carpeting. The Roomba S9 Plus also struggled a bit cleaning sand from low-pile carpeting, earning a low average dust and sand pickup of 28%. While not the worst result we’ve seen (that honor belongs to the Ecovacs Deebot 600 at 18%), it’s definitely near the bottom. But we’ve put the current AI bots to the test in the real world, and they aren’t that good yet. Certain models are pretty good at avoiding certain obstacles, but none of them reliably avoid every kind of common floor clutter, and some models don’t deliver on their promises at all.
The 700 series, introduced in May 2011, though largely similar to the 500 and 600 series, included a more robust cleaning system, improved AeroVac Bin with HEPA filter, and improved battery life. Like the 500 series, the 700 series had models with different technologies and accessories. Besides these two models, Roomba 770 and 782e were available, with scheduling, Dirt Detect, and full bin indicator. Also, the first- and second-generation Roombas can get stuck on rug tassels and electrical cords. Third-generation and newer models are able to reverse their brushes to escape entangled cords and tassels.