Capabilities overview

To support a growing list of robots with different sub- as well as supersets of features, the concept of capabilities was introduced.

Although the names should be fairly self-explanatory, this page documents what each of them does. Your robot will probably have multiple but not all of these.

AutoEmptyDockAutoEmptyControlCapability

This capability enables you to control if the robot should automatically auto-empty its dustbin into the auto-empty-dock after a finished cleanup.

AutoEmptyDockManualTriggerCapability

This capability is used to manually trigger the auto-emptying of the robot’s dustbin into the auto-empty-dock.

BasicControlCapability

Basic robot controls. This should be something that all supported ValetudoRobots implement.

Its methods are:

• start
• pause
• stop
• home

Unfortunately, not all vendors support “stop”. If that’s not the case, stop will perform a pause.

CarpetModeControlCapability

This capability enables you to enable or disable the automatic suction power increase when the robot detects that it has driven onto a carpet.

CarpetSensorModeControlCapability

Some robots - usually those with advanced mopping capabilities - come with a dedicated sensor - usually ultrasonic - used to detect carpets. This capability allows you to select how the robot should deal with carpets detected during navigation.

Depending on your robot, possible options can include

• Ignore and just drive over it
• Avoid
• Lift the mop

CollisionAvoidantNavigationControlCapability

Some robots and firmwares allow the user to tweak the robots navigation a little. As the name suggests, this capability provides a toggle that allows to select between less bumps into things or less risk of missed areas during cleaning.

CombinedVirtualRestrictionsCapability

This capability enables you to configure Virtual Walls + Restricted Zones.

ConsumableMonitoringCapability

This capability enables you to view and reset the status of the consumables of your robot.

CurrentStatisticsCapability

This capability provides statistics such as covered area or runtime of the current or most recent cleanup job.

DoNotDisturbCapability

This capability enables you to set a DND timespan. The exact behaviour is dependent on your vendor.

One usual behaviour is that the robot won’t continue a cleanup that has been interrupted due to an empty battery until DND is over. On some robots it also dims the LEDs during the DND phase.

FanSpeedControlCapability

This capability enables you to set the suction power of your robot.

GoToLocationCapability

This capability enables you to send your robot to a location on your map. It will simply stay there and do nothing.

One common use-case of this is to send the robot to your bin.

KeyLockCapability

This capability enables you to disable control of the robot via the buttons on the devices. This is useful if you have cats, children and other small creatures that may interact with your robot without thinking about it.

LocateCapability

This capability enables you to let the robot play some kind of sound often at full volume so that you can find it.

Useful if you’ve completely lost track of where that thing went. It’s usually below the couch.

ManualControlCapability

This capability allows manually driving around the robot like an RC car with tank controls.

MapResetCapability

This capability enables you to reset the current map.

MapSegmentEditCapability

This capability enables you to join and split detected segments.

If you’re new to Valetudo, you might be referring to Segments as Rooms. It’s the same thing. I just didn’t like the term room, because they don’t necessarily have to actually be rooms.

MapSegmentRenameCapability

This capability enables you to assign names to segments. Naming segments makes it easier to distinguish them.

MapSegmentationCapability

This capability enables you to clean detected segments.

If you’re new to Valetudo, you might be referring to Segments as Rooms. It’s the same thing. I just didn’t like the term room, because they don’t necessarily have to actually be rooms.

MapSnapshotCapability

This capability enables you to list all existing map snapshots as well as restore one of them.

Snapshots are made automatically by the robots’ firmware. They’re basically backups. Use this if your robot has lost track of where it is and somehow corrupted the map.

MappingPassCapability

Some robots may allow for or even require a mapping pass instead of building the map as they go. This capability is used to start the mapping process.

Don’t be confused if your robot doesn’t have this capability. Usually, they will build the map during cleanup without requiring a separate mapping pass.

MopDockCleanManualTriggerCapability

This capability allows you to start and stop cleaning of the mops in the mop dock.

MopDockDryManualTriggerCapability

This capability allows you to start and stop drying of the mops in the mop dock.

ObstacleAvoidanceControlCapability

Some robots featuring obstacle detection and avoidance using technology such as fully local AI object detection or lasers give you the option to completely disable that. This can be useful if it wrongly detects and avoids obstacles where there are none.

OperationModeControlCapability

This capability allows you to select if the robot should only vacuum, only mop or both.

PendingMapChangeHandlingCapability

Some robots may occasionally discover a new map and ask for user confirmation to actually use it. This capability enables you to either accept or reject the new map.

PersistentMapControlCapability

This capability enables you to control whether the robot persists its map across cleanups. When persisted maps are disabled, a new map is generated on each new full cleanup.

PetObstacleAvoidanceControlCapability

Robots featuring fully local AI camera object detection for obstacle avoidance may feature a special AI model specifically tuned to detect pet feces that would otherwise lead to catastrophic and fatal results.

Because of that, these models are a bit trigger-happy and therefore may cause detection of objects where there are none which is why the firmware allows robot owners without pets to disable that and get less ghost obstacles in return.

QuirksCapability

Valetudo aims to be a generic abstraction. That means that it tries to unify vendor-specific commands and concepts into generic ones so that you don’t have to worry about which brand of robot you buy as Valetudo will work the same on all of them.

Sometimes however there might be things that only one Vendor or even only one model of robot does. Adding that to the core infrastructure of Valetudo wouldn’t make sense as the generic interface would soon become an interface specific to one particular robot which would go against the core goal of being vendor-agnostic.

Still, limiting features to the least common denominator may at times also not be ideal. This is where quirks come in.

A quirk is a vendor, robot or firmware-specific tunable that doesn’t fit into Valetudo (yet?).

Think of quirks as some kind of convenience playground testing section. Usually, they will be tunables that you change once and then likely never touch again.

SpeakerTestCapability

This capability enables you to play a test sound at the configured volume level. It is used to try out the newly set audio volume.

SpeakerVolumeControlCapability

This capability enables you to control the volume of the integrated speaker of the robot.

TotalStatisticsCapability

This capability provides all-time statistics such as covered area, cleanup count or total runtime. Depending on your robot, these might not survive a factory reset.

VoicePackManagementCapability

This capability enables you to change and upload new voice packs to the robot.

WaterUsageControlCapability

This capability enables you to configure the water output flow for mopping.

WifiConfigurationCapability

This capability enables you to get the current Wi-Fi connection details (including rssi) as well as reconfigure Wi-Fi.

ZoneCleaningCapability

This capability enables you to send your robot to clean one or more (depending on the vendor) zones drawn onto the map.