How does a robot vacuum cleaner know when it's done?
The robot vacuum cleaner is a very smart home appliance and it is always amazing to see how meticulously it handles the chore of vacuuming the floor, which is beyond impressive.
But would you have a question, how does a robot vacuum cleaner know where to clean? And how does it know when the cleaning is done?
If you have looked up the information, then you will be surprised to find that the answer is very simple: navigation technology!
Let's answer these questions in detail.
How does a robot vacuum cleaner know where to clean?
Robot vacuum cleaners were created to clean floors for household chores. The robot vacuum has built-in sensors that allow it to find its way around your home and create a layout (or create a floor plan) for your home.
When you first introduce a robot vacuum into your home, it uses a first cleaning plan to determine the size of your home, learn about individual rooms and create maps and floor plans for more efficient and seamless cleaning.
This technology is truly fascinating, but is only seen in newer, higher-end robots. Earlier models or low-budget robot vacuums usually do not have this smart mapping technology.
How does a robot vacuum cleaner know when to stop cleaning?
Most robot vacuum cleaners, have built-in mechanisms to alert the robot to stop. They are generally set up with these three mechanisms.
- Bin is full: Many robot vacuums are equipped with a full bin sensor. When the robot senses that the bin is full, it will stop cleaning and return to the automatic emptying base to empty the bin. It will then return to continue cleaning.
- Low battery: The robots are alerted when the battery is low (usually 20% or less) and will quickly navigate back to the charging station to recharge the battery. Once they have enough battery power, they will continue cleaning.
- When it finishes its cleaning session: The robot vacuum knows when it is done cleaning your house because it has a mapping algorithm that knows the size of your house, the size of the area swept, the cleaning speed, the collisions and turns it makes. All this information allows the robot to efficiently detect when it has cleaned the entire floor.
Again these technologies are only found in high end robot vacuums, entry level robot vacuums generally don't have any of these smart features, they may lose power during cleaning, empty their bins manually, and they don't have a smart map feature.