The vacuum adjusts the suction for different types of flooring. When it moves from a hard floor to carpet, it increases the suction power. It has a four-beam obstacle avoidance system that accurately notices and avoids things like chair legs. As my wife and I were watching it do its initial cleaning, she asked whether I was going to move a ceramic umbrella stand. No need — the Q11 stopped about half an inch short and steered around it. The Q11 never touched most obstacles. It just approached them, stopped, moved around and kept going. The Q11 is pretty much ready to go out of the box. Unpack the vacuum and base and find a convenient place to plug in the base, which is about the size of a small trash can. There is a QR code on the instruction sheet that you scan with your smartphone that takes you to the app store to download the Neabot app. You'll run through a quick wizard to give the Q11 your Wi-Fi credentials. You'll need to charge the vacuum before using it. Set it down on the floor in front of the base and press the charge button. The vacuum will power on and dock itself in the charger. There are voice responses for each step, so the Q11 will say "charging" when it is settled on the charger. You can initiate cleaning from the app, or you can just pick up the vacuum, take it to a room you'd like cleaned and press the power button. The vacuum will find the outer edges of the room and then start vacuuming back and forth like a lawn mower. It covered the room very nicely. I did run a second cleaning cycle to see how well it remembered the room, and it did the job much faster the second time. When the cleaning is finished, the Q11 announces that it's returning to base. Sometimes it had problems and just wandered around the room until it got tired of looking and announced that it couldn't find the charger. Then I'd pick it up and place it in front of the charger and press the charge button on top of the vacuum and it would dock itself. Once docked, the base sucks the dirt from the vacuum's dustbin. The dirt transfer is the loudest part of the process, but it only lasts 10 seconds or so. My house has some room-to-room transitions that are a little tall.