Most robot vacuums available to the public today use a simple physical impact or proximity sensor system to identify obstacles. Place a cardboard box in your robot vacuum’s path and watch it bounce, turn, bounce, turn, and so forth, until it finds its way around the box. The Roborock S8 MaxV Ultra sees what’s in front of it and avoids obstacles before it needs to interact with them. It also maps those objects and sends that information to you through the Roborock app so you can take care of the obstacle before it becomes a problem.
Each time the robot identifies one of a long list of known obstacles, it marks the spot on the map that you can see in the Roborock app. If it sees a pair of shoes (that might have loose laces that could become entangled in the robot’s gears), a shoe icon appears in the app on the map, and the shoes are avoided.
While Roborock’s robot vacuums have had object-avoidance systems before, it’s the transparency and communication of what the S8 MaxV Ultra is responding to which makes it stand out.
