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Floor Vacuum Robot for $200
abhikhurana writes "MSNBC is running a review of Roomba,
supposedly the first intelligent 'floor vac', as in a cross between vacuum
cleaner and a robot. I think its especially suited for lazy bums like me. Just
let it loose, sitback and enjoy. There is also a video of how it cleans the
floors, which requires windows media player (what else?) to watch it. It seems
that the robo cleaner can indeed do that job for which it has been designed. A
related article on
Techreview has slightly more details
about how it works. There is also a website exclusively for
Roomba."
Actually my wife has one. It is worth every penny. I also have a robo-mow robotic lawnmower (made by Friendly Robotics) to take care-o-th-lawn. I think I paid about $300 for it. The vaccuuming is no biggie to me (since I usually never did it anyway), but the robomower has paid for itself many times over in the time I have saved. $500 total spent. Hundreds of hours saved already. That's pretty darn good ROI if you ask me. Of course for those who don't make a point of exercising, the robomow may be a death ticket.
in a local paper. It said that the Roomba couldn't completely replace your standard vacumm. It doesn't do stairs, and it has no attachments for things like furniture upholstery, etc. The article basically said it was good if you lived in a small place such as an apartment or didn't have kids, but if you need to do heavy duty cleaning, the 'bot wasn't gonna repalce your standard vac.
Why not fork?
For those robot geeks among us who did NOT know, this is Rodney Brooks' company.
Rodney A. Brooks is Director of the 230 person MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is the Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corp (Roomba)
He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981.
This guy is to robot-geeks what RMS is to Open-Source.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Electrolux of Sweden has a machine called Trilobyte that can recharge it self. See http://www.trilobite.electrolux.se/ . It is much more expensive though.
It manuevers around and under everything that is over 6" high. So, it can deal with coffee tables, chairs, beds, etc. It detects stairs and avoids them. It comes with a virtual wall unit (you can buy more), that sends out a signal the roomba won't cross. When I first got it, I put it is my main room. It has a TV, a large L shaped couch, and 2 litter boxes. The room is 20x10. I eat in front of the tv, so you can imagine all that crap. I ran it in there, and I was amazed at all the stuff if picked up.
There are a few caveats, however. Battery life. You can only do "3 medium size rooms". My carpet is pretty thick, however. It is closer to 2 rooms. Plus, the time to charge the battery is 12 hours. You can buy spare batteries and a "quick charger", however, they are $60 bucks apiece. It is designed to do one room at a time, so you just can't put it up on the second floor and let it do everything. You have to put it into a room, close the door, and let it rip. It is not designed as a spot cleaner. If you have one really messy part of the room, you are better off getting your regular vacuum and vacumming that part of the room and then putting the roomba to work. The dirt collector is pretty small, so you have to empty it out after every room. Also, because of all the cat hair, I spend a lot of time cleaning the brushes and making sure the machine is clean. Unfortunately, it does not map out the room, so it may go over some areas that are not as high traffic as others, due to the algorithm that is uses.
My girlfriend thought I was nuts for buying it. However, for $200 bucks, (the price a of a decent vacuum) it is pretty cool. Now, only if it would travel stairs, do multiple rooms, have a larger dirt container, and plug itself back in, it would be near perfect