Usually one of four things: something on the floor it can’t see, furniture just tall enough to drive under but not back out from, dirty sensors, or hair wrapped around a wheel. Check those before you blame the robot.

Work the four causes in order

Start with the wheels and the front caster. Hair wound around an axle is the most common cause of a robot that used to work fine and now strands itself in places it handled for months. It’s also the easiest to miss because you have to flip the machine over to see it.

Then wipe the sensor windows on the underside and the bumper. Dust on a cliff sensor causes false stops; dust on the front sensors causes erratic navigation and phantom obstacles.

Then look at where it dies. If it’s the same spot every time, that’s a fixed hazard — a low couch, a chair leg it wedges against, a rug edge, or a cord nest. Set a no-go zone around it in the app and the problem disappears permanently.

Last, look at furniture clearance. A gap that’s just tall enough to enter and not quite tall enough to exit is a trap the robot will fall into every single run.

Cords are the one you should just fix

Even the best AI obstacle avoidance is not perfect on cords, because a thin cable against a similar-colored floor is genuinely hard to see. A five-minute cord tidy in the first week — clips along the baseboard, a cable box under the desk — pays off for the entire life of the robot.

This is also worth knowing before you buy: if your home has a lot of loose cabling you’re not willing to manage, prioritize a robot with camera-based AI obstacle avoidance rather than a LiDAR-only model.

Dad’s Take

Flip it over and check the wheels first. That’s the fix about half the time and it takes thirty seconds.