Roomba

We've had this nifty little household robot for about a month now.  It is a Roomba - an autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner sold by iRobot and introduced to the market twenty years ago.  Our model is connected to our household WiFi and includes mapping capabilities.  Over a period of time it has 'learned' its way around the first floor of the house and navigates its way around known obstacles.  

We have all hardwood and tile floors with some area carpets and if you don't move the furniture too much it's methodology is much like that of a towed array side-scan sonar used to locate a ship wreck.  What I liken to mowing the lawn.

From time to time the forest of chair legs beneath the dining room table challenge its capabilities and on rare occasion will cause it to get stuck - but other than that it performs a decent job of cleaning the floor.

When it needs to offload collected debris, senses that it needs to recharge or on command by either of our handheld devices or preset program it returns to its docking station.  It is murder on the dog hair.

Speaking of which - we still have our old-school kitchen Roomba.  It is always at the ready to clean-up anything I drop or spill on the floor and then returns to its docking station.