Try to follow the route and switch to mapping mode if it doesn't match?

Honestly I don't know why the Roombas don't just trace the perimeter. The semi-random probing they do seems inefficient to me. But then I don't know anything about the algorithm they're using, so maybe I'm missing something.

I have a top-end Roomba 980 like the GP is referring to. They don't use random exploration. When you start a cleaning cycle, it begins working in a back and forth cleaning pattern of parallel lines. When it runs out of room to perform the back and forth lines, it moves to a place where there's a "hole" in its map. That may just be a corner behind a chair, or it could be a doorway to a different room. It basically repeats this process until it has filled in all the holes and built a full map of the room, level, or whatever area you're letting it vacuum.

The algorithm definitely isn't perfect. It might clean half of the room where it starts, then wander around and clean most of the house before making its way back to finish that room. Still it seems to work well overall. What really fascinates me is how the algorithm and SLAM mapping gives it very familiar behavioral patterns. For example when it's coming back into a room that it's already visited, it might drive just inside the room, pause, "look" side to side (panning the camera to find landmarks it recognizes), then continue on.

My Neato Botvac works the same way with the one exception that the second it touches my rug it immediately goes over it in a snake pattern without any exploration. The rug is thicker than the floor by about 2-3 cms so I dont know if it has some sort of special programming to recognize rectangular rugs

Mine doesn't seem as straightforward. It goes into "clean this space" mode and does the parallel pattern, but also seems to do a lot of, "hey, what's in this direction" randomly.

It's not the top end model though

> cameras

wow I didn't know these have cameras.

I wonder if they'll sell/subpoena the video data as well as the floor plans. I wonder how well secured it is and what the extent of punishment for poorly interpreted imagery will be.

It's only the top few models. It's using some kind of image analysis to recognize landmarks and help it navigate.

The video would have to be processed onboard, because wifi isn't require for the Roomba to work. I'll have to look at my router's logs for the Roomba, it should be pretty obvious if it's doing any amount of video uploading.

That's a topcoder/codeforces algorithm competition sized problem.