First time with Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni

The new Ecovacs Deebot X1 Omni is about to be unboxed. The maltipoo is asserting her dominance over the new addition to the family.

Accessories include twin sweeping brush heads sporting port and starboard colours, and two mop discs.

The robot will have its work cut out for it. Dog and cat fur everywhere, although these two aren't the worst culprits. Those will be the other two cats (not pictured). What we have here is the docking bay at which the cleaning unit will not only charge itself when inactive, but also collect clean water for its mopping function, and upload vacuumed dust, dirt, fur, etc. into a dust bag with capacity for 60 days, and dirty water gets uploaded into a separate reservoir.

The water reservoirs are shaped like jerry cans. Clean water goes into the right-hand reservoir, while the left hand one collects dirty water after mopping is done. Between them is the slot for housing the cleaning brush. Some manual maintenance is still required, after all.

A look at the cleaning unit which we have christened "Omnomnomni". Not only does it have eyes in front, but the coning tower houses another rotating camera for mapping. It sees all. Should I be scared?

At rest and charging. I can command it via an app, but it also responds to voice commands. For example, I can call it to my location to do some spot cleaning. I should read the rest of the manual for other voice-activated functions.

The first time I activated it was to map its boundaries, essentially defining for itself its scope of work. In the video (above) it's entered 'Housekeeping Mode', although I set it only to vacuum, not mop. It took just under three minutes to clean under the dining table while it navigated through this forest of chair legs. Next time, I'll stack the chairs to make the process less anxiety inducing. Elsewhere, it got hung up on a bathroom mat, so those need to be picked up off the floor too before it goes about its business. According to the app, it took just under an hour to clean about 45 sq m, which is the size of the cleaning area I allowed it.

Overall, it did a decent job getting fur, bits of shed cat claws, stray cat litter... and other assorted floor debris. Tomorrow, I'll try the vacuum/mop function and really see what it can do. I hope it'll be smart enough not to mop the carpet.