Ever imagine inviting a robot with lasers into your home" The Roborock Q5+ uses LiDAR to create a 3D map to navigate and clean every corner.

Growing up with an affinity for vacuums and cleaning, you?d think one would surely grow up to be a robot vacuum advocate, if not first adopter. In fact, I?ve tested several consumer models over the years, all arriving with grandiose promises of a liberating level of autonomous operation supposedly capable of keeping floors tidy ? completely unattended ? aided by robot technology. The reality was those first several generations of robot vacuums sucked in all the wrong ways, delivering an experience that was anything but convenient. Clunky and clumsy, these devices regularly meandered drunkenly without any observable rhyme or reason, often leaving patches of debris and sometimes seemingly avoiding sections most in need of its attention. Back in the technology?s formative years, robot vacs were apt to trap themselves into a corner, tangle themselves on loose items, and regularly become inoperable. They were the real world equivalent of the worst NPC in a video game ? just smart enough to get themselves in perplexing situations requiring human intervention. Worst of all, the entire convenience factor was negated by the size of the paltry dust containers equipped across all makes and models, the Achilles heel of all robot vacuums for many years.

So for a long while my feelings for robot vacuums was a great big ?ehhh.? It was ...