In its short five-year history, Roborock has upgraded many features to improve its performance by listening to and identifying issues of customers. At the Roborock Lab, research and development spend thousands of hours testing technologies such as visual recognition machine learning, obstacle avoidance and threshold climbing, product-endurance testing and mopping.
“The biggest pain point customers have is that robot vacuums can be ‘dumb,’ in that they go about aimlessly, or get confused under beds, eventually needing to be ‘rescued’,” says Chang. Roborock now uses LiDAR, a more accurate type of laser-based navigation than its previous system of vSLAM, a camera-based system. For instance, in dark surroundings, LiDAR navigates better than the robots that rely on vSLAM; which lose accuracy in poor light. Also, the LiDAR laser scans through the entire room to get a clearer picture of obstacles on the ground, whereas vSLAM robots rely on bump sensors in conjunction with the camera to calculate the cleaning route. The laser technology allows customers to draw no-go lines with higher accuracy, so fewer areas are missed.
Users can also customise their vacuum “wishlist” on the Roborock smartphone app, setting up no-go zones and a detailed spot-cleaning area, if that specific area needs to be cleaned thoroughly.
Another issue that regularly crops up with robot vacuum cleaners is poor visibility, says Chang. Other robovacs on the market slam themselves into furniture, and have been known to run over pet faeces and spread it around the house.
Roborock has overcome this with a ReactiveAI system, found on the Roborock S6 MaxV and later models. The S6 MaxV uses two cameras as opposed to one, that perceives data on types of objects as well as the depth of objects, helping it avoid obstacles.
The latest Roborock model, the S7, features a mopping system with a technology called VibraRise™ combining an intelligent auto lift feature and a sonic mopping system, with ultrasonic carpet recognition. The built-in ultrasonic carpet recognition technology means the robovac can recognise when it is on carpeted surfaces, automatically lifting the mopping module so as not to soak the carpet, allowing the S7 to vacuum and mop in one go, without the need for manual intervention.
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