bObsweep Standard & PetHair Robot Vacuum

UPDATE: Bob is a bust! Soon after leaving a two-star rating for Bob, I came into the room to find him circling in a tight turn in the center of the room. He had thrown a tread. Still haven't got it fixed, and I'm not sure if it's even worth it. Given it accomplishes little anyway, there's no loss in effectiveness. The only loss is the sizable $400-ish investment for a generally worthless piece of equipment. Run do not walk from this purported "great" purchase! XXXXXXXXX I loved the promise of Bob, and I liked the name. Just having that helpful guy "Bob" around the house to get the floors clean sounded great. He mopped. He disinfected with UV, and he cleaned better than his competitors given his great brushes, large waste container, etc. I particularly had high hopes for the mop and UV functions, given we have a grand daughter in the house who is immune suppressed because of her heart transplant. To be fair, Bob isn't completely worthless. He may actually clean with the UV light; however, he so often got stuck in corners, on small area rugs (as low as just under one quarter inch), under cabinets, and under furniture that Bob gave a whole new meaning to "spot cleaning". Worse yet, when helping Bob out of his man predicaments, he routinely left relatively large piles of debris behind him. His vaunted algorithms never seemed to order a return to this area. Likewise, they never seemed to compute solutions to the obstacle problems, even after cleaning only one room for a month. As for his vaunted mopping function, if you have a room with no counters, no rugs, few furniture, and few corners that's no more than 20 square feet, you'll find that Bob does a mediocre job of mopping. Anything more and he largely just smears dirt willy nilly about the place. I had read that Bob had trouble getting under cabinets. Since our family is uniformly tall, we built our cabinets with nearly an inch taller kickspaces under them. What this meant for Bob is that he got wedged so tightly under the cabinets that he had to be rescued. Upon freeing him, it was clear that his case had taken damage. Speaking of Bob's movement and navigational shortcomings, he also struggled to get to his charging station and once there struggled to dock. Despite multiple variations on placement, it was not uncommon to find Bob sitting next to his docking station but completely uncharged. When that happens, you can't just put him on his station either. You have to unplug the charging station and plug the charging cable directly into Bob. So what can I say about Bob? I still love the idea of Bob. I should have returned him, but he's kind of like the proverbial slow cousin. Everybody likes him, even though he struggles with the most basic tasks. So we found a room in the basement with no carpets, little furniture and the minimum number of corners. With about 140 square feet of unobstructed access, he's found a meaningful existence for himself. Meanwhile, I bought a Roomba to take care of approximately 1800 square feet upstairs. I would encourage a would-be buyer to think carefully before buying their own BOB. Maybe one day Bob's creators will work out his bugs, but for now he's just not there yet. Best of luck!