The present invention provides a mobile robot configured to navigate an operating environment, that includes a machine vision system comprising a camera that captures images of the operating environment using a machine vision system; detects the presence of an occlusion obstructing a portion of the field of view of a camera based on the captured images, and generate a notification when an occlusion obstructing the portion of the field of view of the camera is detected, and maintain occlusion detection data describing occluded and unobstructed portions of images being used by the SLAM application.