Robot vacuum

A robot vacuum is a small, battery-powered cleaning robot that drives around the floor on its own, picking up dust and, on many models, mopping as well. It decides where to go with sensors: simple models rely on their bumpers and on sensors that detect drops, while many others carry a laser scanner or cameras that let them draw a map of the home. Most connect to home Wi-Fi, so you can start, schedule and steer them from a phone app, usually through the maker’s servers. That connection and that map raise the same privacy and security questions as a camera or a smart speaker.

If you are choosing one, How to choose a robot vacuum and mop goes through navigation, cameras, base stations, running costs and software updates, with a dated table of 28 models. Which robot vacuum is best? sums up what independent testers such as Which? and Stiftung Warentest found in 2026.

How does a robot vacuum find its way around?

It combines several sensors, each with its own job:

• Bump sensors. The front bumper registers contact with a wall or a chair leg. iRobot describes this as “light touch bumper technology to identify walls and other obstacles”.
• Cliff sensors. Infrared or optical sensors underneath the robot point at the floor and notice when it suddenly falls away, at the top of a staircase for example, so the robot turns back. Ecovacs explains that they “emit infrared signals toward the floor”.
• Motion sensors. Sensors on the wheels count how far each wheel has turned, and a gyroscope or an IMU (inertial measurement unit) measures turns. They tell the robot roughly how far it has moved, but small errors add up, so it also needs to look around.
• A sensor for mapping. Many robots carry LiDAR, a laser that spins, often inside a small turret on top, and measures the distance to walls and furniture. Others use a camera. In an explainer on navigation, Roborock describes robots that use the reflection of laser rays and others with “upwards facing cameras”.
• Obstacle avoidance. Sensors at the front look for small objects on the floor, such as cables or socks. Roborock’s example combines “3D structured light”, which projects a light pattern to measure distance, with a color camera and a chip that recognizes objects, a use of computer vision.

Earlier designs moved more at random: Roborock’s explainer describes an older approach in which a robot vacuum “randomly bumps around its surroundings and identifies obstacles upon contact”.

How does a robot vacuum make a map of your home?

A mapping robot uses SLAM, short for simultaneous localization and mapping. It draws the map and works out where it stands on that map at the same time, correcting each with the other as it moves. After the first runs, the app shows a floor plan. You can then name rooms, draw areas the robot must avoid, and send it to clean only the kitchen.

Depending on the maker and the settings, the map is stored on the robot, on the maker’s servers, or both. A floor plan is information about your home: its layout, its size and, once you label the rooms, how you use them.

How does a robot vacuum connect to the app and the cloud?

Most connect to the home Wi-Fi network, and many only on the 2.4 GHz band. iRobot’s setup article says “Some robot models do not support 5GHz connectivity” and “We do not support WPA3 security”. That matters after a router upgrade, as the entries on WPA3 and Wi-Fi 7 explain. The maker’s app usually reaches the robot through the maker’s servers: that lets you start a clean from the office, and also ties the robot to your account and that service.

Robot vacuums can also join Matter, the shared smart home standard. The Connectivity Standards Alliance added them in Matter 1.2, on 23 October 2023, with remote start, “cleaning modes (dry vacuum vs wet mopping)” and status details such as “brush status, error reporting, charging status”. The official Matter software kit also defines a Service Area cluster, “an interface for controlling the areas where a device should operate”, which lets an app send a robot that supports it to a chosen area, such as one room. Matter 1.4.2, in August 2025, standardized how robots answer a series of commands, because “previously, device responses varied”. Through Matter, a compatible app from another company can start and stop the robot, but the maker’s own app may still be needed for maps and updates.

What does a robot vacuum know about your home?

At least a floor plan and when it runs; models with a front camera can also take pictures of what is on the floor. What leaves the house depends on the maker, so look in the app and the privacy notice for:

• whether the camera can be switched off, and whether images are ever sent to the maker, for example to train its object recognition, and if so whether that is opt-in;
• where the map is stored and whether you can delete it, including the copy on the server;
• which features still work without the internet.

Does your robot vacuum have a camera? explains which models have one, what the map contains, where makers say it is stored and which settings to change.

Documented cases, from test images that leaked through contractors to maps that appeared to stay on a maker’s servers after a reset, are covered with their sources in Home robots, cameras and remote operators: who sees inside your home?.

How do you keep a robot vacuum secure?

Keep its software up to date. A robot vacuum runs firmware that the maker updates over the internet, an over-the-air update, and flaws do turn up. In May 2025 CISA, the US cybersecurity agency, published an advisory on Ecovacs Deebot robots and base stations: among other problems, some base stations did not check the integrity of firmware, so a malicious update could be sent to them. An update to the advisory in July 2025 says that Ecovacs released fixes for all affected devices and pushed them to users.

Three habits help. Check the maker’s security support period before buying. Put the robot on a separate network for smart devices if your router offers one. Before selling or giving the robot away, remove it from your account, delete the map and reset it. In the EU, the Cyber Resilience Act, Regulation (EU) 2024/2847, will require makers of connected products to deliver security updates, with its product rules applying from 11 December 2027.

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