The official schedule
This is Pudu’s own component maintenance table, from §5.1 of the BellaBot Pro operation guide. Every task is powered off — that’s a column in the original, not our advice.
| Component | Interval | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Drive wheels + auxiliary wheels | Weekly | Clean out tangled hair and stuck debris |
| Trays | Weekly | Wipe the surface with a clean cloth |
| Vision sensor, depth vision sensors, LiDAR | Weekly | Clean cloth or lens cleanser |
| Robot body | Monthly | Wipe the surface with a clean cloth |
That’s the entire published schedule. Weekly and monthly — nothing else. The same table appears in Pudu’s standalone BellaBot maintenance page, which covers both the BellaBot and the BellaBot Pro — so the schedule is the same whichever one you run.
One difference worth knowing: the Pro guide is the only place the wheel step says “tangled hair and other stuck stuff.” Pudu’s general maintenance page merges trays and wheels into one row and says only “wipe the surface.” If you follow the shorter version, you will wipe a wheel that has half a ponytail wound around its axle. Use the Pro wording on either machine.
Power it down properly first
The guide’s cleaning sequence is: hold the power switch 3 seconds, confirm “Power off” appears on screen, then wipe body → trays and wheels → optics.
Pudu’s standalone maintenance page adds a step the Pro guide omits: open the rear cover of the battery box and turn the key switch to OFF. The stricter version is the better habit — the soft power-off leaves the machine live enough that a bumped switch restarts it while your hands are in the wheel wells.
The no-liquid rule, and its one exception
Verbatim from the guide: “Do not use water or any other liquid to clean the robot. Always make sure that the robot is kept dry.” No caustic chemicals, no cleansers, no detergents — dry cloth only, and never while it’s powered on and working.
The exception is the tray pad. If it has oil on it, Pudu says take it out, wash it separately, and put it back only after it has dried completely. That’s the one part that gets to see water, and only off the robot.
For wheels, there’s a specific technique: lay the robot down on its side to reach entangled debris, and put a mat down first so you don’t scratch the shell. Trying to do this with the robot upright is how people give up and leave the hair in place.
Battery rules
These come from §1.1 of the guide, and they matter more than the wiping does:
- Charge at 20%. Running at a low battery for a long time impairs battery life.
- Original batteries and chargers only.
- Unplug when full. Don’t leave the charger connected long-term on a full robot.
- Storing it? Turn the key switch in the battery box to OFF.
- Don’t charge unattended — Pudu explicitly says to designate a person for it.
Swapping a pack is a hot-swap with a countdown. Opening the battery compartment cover puts the robot into battery replacement mode for 2 minutes; if you take longer, the machine shuts down on its own. Lift the handle to horizontal, pull the pack with both hands, seat the new one, return the handle to vertical, close the cover. You can also check pack health without tools: open the rear cover and press the button on the battery to read its charge band.
Two sensors people confuse
A tray that reports wrong isn’t always a tray problem. Pudu’s troubleshooting section treats the tray detection sensor as a separate cleaning target from the tray surface — if trays read incorrectly, check they’re seated, then clean the sensor with cloth or lens cleanser.
And if the robot moves hesitantly rather than erroring out, the guide points at oil or soup on the depth vision sensors first. In a dining room, the optics get dirty faster than the calendar expects; the guide says to address unexpected contamination immediately rather than waiting for the weekly pass.
What Pudu doesn’t publish
This is the honest gap, and it’s a big one. Across every official BellaBot document we could read, there is no published replacement interval or wear limit for any mechanical part — not drive wheels, not auxiliary wheels, not tray pads, not trays. There’s no daily checklist, no quarterly or annual service visit, no battery cycle-life figure, no lubrication schedule, and no LiDAR recalibration interval.
The closest thing to a lifetime number is the warranty table, which is a commercial term, not a wear spec — but it tells you what Pudu expects to fail:
- Battery: 24 months
- LiDAR, upper and lower RGBD vision sensors, DC hub motor, universal wheel, tray sensors, touch sensors, microphones, battery cover, in-line charger: 12 months each
- Trays: no warranty period listed at all — they’re treated as a consumable
So plan on trays and tray pads as running costs, budget a battery around the two-year mark, and set your own inspection rhythm for wheels beyond the weekly de-hairing, because Pudu won’t give you one.
Why the paperwork matters
Pudu’s warranty excludes damage from foreign matter — water, oil, sand — and from “improper installation, use, charging or storage without following the instructions.” In a restaurant, those two exclusions cover most of what actually kills these robots. The weekly ten minutes is also your warranty defense.
If it’s already beyond wiping, Pudu’s service contact is techservice@pudutech.com. Get the rate in writing before you book anything — Pudu doesn’t publish service pricing on its documentation site, so it comes from your dealer or PUDU Care plan.