An autonomous floor cleaning robot, comprising: a robot body; a controller supported by the robot body; a drive supporting the robot body to maneuver the robot across a floor surface in response to commands from the controller; a pad holder attached to an underside of the robot body and to hold a removable cleaning pad during operation of the cleaning robot, the removable cleaning pad comprising a mounting plate and a mounting surface, the mounting plate being attached to the mounting surface; and characterized in that the robot further comprises: a pad sensor (624, 724) to sense a pad type identification feature on the removable cleaning pad and to generate a signal based on the pad type identification feature, the pad type identification feature defined at least in part by a cutout (803E, 1012, 1212, 1305) on the mounting plate; wherein the mounting plate enables the pad sensor to detect the pad type identification feature, and wherein the controller is responsive to the signal generated by the pad sensor to perform operations comprising: identifying a type of the pad from among a set of multiple pad types based on the signal; selecting a cleaning mode from among cleaning modes according to the identified pad type, and controlling the robot according to a selected cleaning mode. a robot body; a controller supported by the robot body; a drive supporting the robot body to maneuver the robot across a floor surface in response to commands from the controller; a pad holder attached to an underside of the robot body and to hold a removable cleaning pad during operation of the cleaning robot, the removable cleaning pad comprising a mounting plate and a mounting surface, the mounting plate being attached to the mounting surface; and characterized in that the robot further comprises: a pad sensor (624, 724) to sense a pad type identification feature on the removable cleaning pad and to generate a signal based on the pad type identification feature, the pad type identification feature defined at least in part by a cutout (803E, 1012, 1212, 1305) on the mounting plate; wherein the mounting plate enables the pad sensor to detect the pad type identification feature, and wherein the controller is responsive to the signal generated by the pad sensor to perform operations comprising: identifying a type of the pad from among a set of multiple pad types based on the signal; selecting a cleaning mode from among cleaning modes according to the identified pad type, and controlling the robot according to a selected cleaning mode. a pad sensor (624, 724) to sense a pad type identification feature on the removable cleaning pad and to generate a signal based on the pad type identification feature, the pad type identification feature defined at least in part by a cutout (803E, 1012, 1212, 1305) on the mounting plate; wherein the mounting plate enables the pad sensor to detect the pad type identification feature, and wherein the controller is responsive to the signal generated by the pad sensor to perform operations comprising: identifying a type of the pad from among a set of multiple pad types based on the signal; selecting a cleaning mode from among cleaning modes according to the identified pad type, and controlling the robot according to a selected cleaning mode. identifying a type of the pad from among a set of multiple pad types based on the signal; selecting a cleaning mode from among cleaning modes according to the identified pad type, and controlling the robot according to a selected cleaning mode.