What kind of furniture lets the robot vacuum under it and around its legs in the place it typically goes? What apartments and homes are large enough to have a robot-width distance between walls, corners and everything that is on the floor? How much do you think Ligne Roset sofas cost? And at $1,000/sqft, surely a lidar can be cheap in comparison. You're kind of proving my point of how off the mark iRobot is.
> What kind of furniture lets the robot vacuum under it and around its legs in the place it typically goes? What apartments and homes are large enough to have a robot-width distance between walls, corners and everything that is on the floor?
This isn't actually a problem.
If the robot vacuum cleaner is 10cm high, any furniture where the gap below it is <9cm the robot will detect with its bump sensor and avoid. Any furniture where the gap is >11cm high, the robot will clean under no problem. The only problem is furniture with a gap in the 9-11cm range. For that you can either buy a different sized robot, or raise or lower the furniture.
Of course you'll have to avoid leaving trailing cables on the floor - but that makes your home neater anyway, so no problem.
You can buy a Lidar robot if you want, of course - the classic random-driving-around Roomba is very much a product of its time.
The iRobot product line barely works without rearranging and adapting all of your furniture and floor space.