Robot Becoming Sentient? Climbs on Bench and Quits

[BMerrill]

BMerrill, interesting. How do you keep Ariel off the tanning ledge?

Ariel is set in the app to clean just the bottom; this keeps her off the tanning ledge. The tanning ledge and steps are brushed a few times about an hour before Ariel explores the bottom. The walls are brushed about once a week as well. About once a month when I'm working around the pool, she gets the opportunity to explore the walls. When she gets on the tanning ledge, I just move her back to the deep water.

 

[Dirk]

What pool doesn't have a step or bench or shelf that would foil a robot that only senses what these robots are sensing? So the solution is to set it to only clean the bottom. The best feature of a robot (IMO) is that it can brush the walls and the edge tile!

Even my simple suction-side vac rotates every so often in case it is stuck against something, and then heads off in another direction. Seems like it would be a simple programming addition that should a robot encounter a shallow-water condition that it stop and backtrack how it got there. What am I missing? Is it because of the possibility it will fall off the surface and crash to the bottom? Either getting stuck upside-down, or possibly damaging itself?

 

[KJohn]

Gotcha, BMerrill, thanks. Sounds like a good system. Flipper doesn't have "floors-only" mode; she's all in or all out (or asleep on the bench ).

 

[KJohn]

Hey Dirk, it does seem like a simple programming tweak could take care of it. But at Marina Pools, they say they virtually never hear about this problem (my situation might have been their first). It seems consumers aren't hollering about it.

I think it may have to do with the depth of my bench, which has 14" of water on it. It was mentioned above that a Maytronics robot didn't shut down in 24" of water, and Flipper has no problem negotiating my normal steps; the top is pretty wide and has maybe 5" of water. So there may be a fairly narrow window of depth of water where Maytronics models get stuck.

 

[Dirk]

Hey Dirk, it does seem like a simple programming tweak could take care of it. But at Marina Pools, they say they virtually never hear about this problem (my situation might have been their first). It seems consumers aren't hollering about it.

I think it may have to do with the depth of my bench, which has 14" of water on it. It was mentioned above that a Maytronics robot didn't shut down in 24" of water, and Flipper has no problem negotiating my normal steps; the top is pretty wide and has maybe 5" of water. So there may be a fairly narrow window of depth of water where Maytronics models get stuck.

Seems weird. I've only owned one pool (which has two benches that would foil a robot, apparently), but I've seen enough pools here, and they all have benches and steps and many have shelves. Just seems weird that this issue isn't so common that it wouldn't have been addressed.

But I'm still trying to figure out why any of a hundred products we all use everyday never work like we think they should! And my first thought is: didn't the guy that designed this ever try it out himself?!? I want to watch a TV show where they bring on the CEOs of companies that manufacture these products:

"Hey Mr. Acme, let's see you open that box of crackers without shredding the top."

or
"Yo Tim, can you show us exactly how to get our iPhones to check for mail?"

or the classic:
"Can you please walk us through the assembly of this [fill-in-the-blank] using the instructions you provided?"

Yes, I realize I just revealed I'm old!! 🤪

 

[KJohn]

Preach!!