Can a robot vacuum cleaner fall off a ladder?

The home appliance market continues to delight housewives with newer and newer appliances that greatly simplify their lives. One striking example of this is robotic vacuum cleaners. They allow you to carry out both dry and wet cleaning indoors, without requiring special attention.

Can a robot vacuum cleaner fall from a staircase in a two-story house?

Manufacturers often like to agitate in a market race that their robotic vacuum cleaners have one or another unique function. Often this is fundamentally wrong. As a rule, the following functions of robotic vacuum cleaners are particularly attractive:

• Light touch that prevents the appliance from damaging furniture.

However, not all robots have additional rubber at the edges, which even if the light touch function fails, will not allow the robot to suddenly collide with the furniture surrounding it.

• Independent return to the base. For robots, it’s normal if they cannot connect to the database the first time — it will try until it succeeds. To possess this function only “on a piece of paper” can models of the cheapest segment, in which a weak battery is often installed, as a result of which they simply do not have enough charge to get to the base.

The base should be installed so that the robot can independently reach it when the battery is discharged or at the end of the cleaning cycle. He finds her on the infrared trail.

• Determining the level of change in height. One of the most important functions for those whose house has several floors. The robot vacuum cleaner is equipped with several sensors that allow it to determine a sharp drop in height on average 1 cm to the edge.

Reference: these same sensors allow the robot to understand whether it can climb onto an obstacle, such as a carpet. The maximum height that a robot vacuum cleaner can overcome on its own is 2 cm on average. Of course, he will not be able to overcome the ladder without outside assistance, however, he will not fall, but will bypass it.

How to protect the robot from falls if it does not recognize the ladder?

There are times when a robot vacuum cleaner cannot recognize a ladder. Often the following reasons are caused by this:

• Dirty sensors. For prevention, you should constantly wipe them, turning the robot upside down.
• Rounded edges of steps. In this case, the operation of the sensors themselves deteriorates, and then it will be necessary to limit the robot's access to such a surface in order to avoid falling.
• Broken settings. This can happen both with time and with factory defects. For correction it is necessary to contact technical support.

Important: the first time you turn on the robot vacuum cleaner after purchase, you should follow how it is oriented in space in order to exclude the likelihood of manufacturing defects

The oldest and cheapest models often lack staircase recognition, but they can also be protected from falling. The same methods are suitable for cases of rounded steps and settings knocked down over time. Such decisions include:

• virtual wall;
• magnetic tape.

Due to infrared radiation, the robot vacuum cleaner does not allow the wall to reach certain areas. It usually needs to be purchased additionally.

Magnetic tape is often bundled with a robot, but they can also be bought in specialized stores. When meeting her, he turns and moves in a different direction.

When buying a robot vacuum cleaner for a multi-storey building, you should pay attention to whether there is a height recognition function in it, which may not be available in cheap or old models. Otherwise (or if the function suddenly fails), you can control the access areas of the robot vacuum cleaner using magnetic tape or a virtual wall.