If you’re in the market for a very, very fancy robot vacuum, you’ll want to read our review of the iRobot Roomba i7+, which is as fancy as it gets. Persistent mapping and localization enable all kinds of cool new features, and an automatic recharging base that also magically empties the Roomba’s dust bin means that you can go for weeks or months at a time with zero effort cleaner floors.

iRobot put a lot of effort into making the i7+ effective enough and reliable enough that they can send it out into a world of homes that are all different from one another and have confidence that it’ll do what it’s supposed to do, which is no small achievement. And for some extra details about the i7+ and iRobot’s approach to consumer robotics, we spoke with Ken Bazydola, Director of Product Management at iRobot, via email.