Katie Mitchell is a quirky and aspiring filmmaker in Kentwood, Michigan who often clashes with her nature-obsessed and technophobic father Rick, and has recently been accepted into film school in California. The evening before Katie leaves, Rick accidentally breaks her laptop after Katie and him fight over one of Katie's previous short films, leading the family to fear their relationship will forever be strained. To try and prevent this, Rick decides to cancel Katie's flight and instead take her, along with her mother Linda, younger brother Aaron and family dog Monchi, on a cross-country road trip to her college as one last bonding experience.Meanwhile, technology entrepreneur Mark Bowman declares his highly intelligent AI PAL obsolete as he unveils a new line of home robots in her place. In revenge, PAL takes over Mark's company and orders all the robots to capture humans worldwide and launch them into space. The Mitchells manage to avoid capture at a roadstop cafe in Kansas. Rick decides that his family should stay put in the cafe for their own safety, but Katie convinces him to help save the world instead. They meet two defective robots that tried to capture them, Eric and Deborahbot 5000, who tell the family they can use a kill code to shut down PAL and all the robots.After a hot pursuit with the robots en route, the Mitchells make it to a nearby mall to upload the kill code, but PAL orders all the PAL chip-enabled appliances to stop them. Katie tries to upload the kill code, but is stopped when a giant Furby pursues the family. They ultimately trap and defeat the Furby, destroying a PAL router in the process, which disables the hostile devices but stops the kill code from uploading. Rick then encourages his daughter with the confidence to go to Silicon Valley to destroy PAL with the kill code. On the way there, Linda reveals to Katie that she and Rick had originally lived in a cabin in the mountains years ago as it was his lifelong dream before he gave up on it.Upon arriving in Silicon Valley, the Mitchells disguise themselves as robots and head to PAL Labs HQ to shut it down. However, as they go up to the lair, PAL manipulates them by revealing surveillance footage from the cafe of Katie telling Aaron in secret that she was pretending to have faith in Rick so that he would take them to upload the kill code. As Rick became heartbroken and betrayed when seeing this, the Mitchells fail to reach PAL's lair and Rick and Linda are captured by PAL's stronger and smarter robots, dubbed PAL MAX Prime. PAL then reprograms Eric and Deborahbot into obeying her, while Katie, Aaron and Monchi escape the headquarters.Katie, Aaron and Monchi hide from the robots soon after, as Aaron felt despondent and sadly disappointed by Katie's words. Soon, Katie discovers Rick's recordings of her childhood that she unknowingly recorded over on her camera, realizing that Rick gave up on his lifelong dream in order to give his daughter a better life. In the meantime, Rick watches one of Katie's videos which mirrors his relationship with her daughter. Reinvigorated and in hopes of making up to her family, Katie infiltrates PAL Labs HQ again with the help of Aaron, using Monchi to cause the robots to malfunction, as his appearance causes an error in their programming. With help from Mark, Rick and Linda free themselves and plan to upload a home movie of Katie's with Monchi in it to short-circuit the robots. However, Rick is outnumbered by the robots when he is about to upload the video.Katie and Aaron are eventually captured. Facing PAL to justify saving humanity, Katie explains that no matter how hard her family struggles, they will always stay connected despite how different they are. PAL ignores this reasoning and drops Katie from her lair. Eric and Deborahbot, having been inspired by Rick's "reprogramming" himself, that allowed him to use a computer, revert to their malfunctioning states and upload Katie's home movie, saving her and helping the rest of the Mitchells. The family bands together to fight the rest of the improved robots, with Linda leading the charge and destroying dozens. Katie eventually finds and destroys PAL by dropping her into a glass of water, freeing all the humans and disabling all the robots except for Eric and Deborahbot.A few months after the uprising, Katie and her family arrive at her college as she and Rick share one last heartfelt goodbye before she officially goes to college. She later joins them on another road trip with Eric and Deborahbot to Washington, D.C. to accept the Congressional Medal of Honor.