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Roomba Competitor Slightly Lacking
tivojafa writes "Following hot on the heels of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, TV Products (USA) Inc have released the "RoboSweep" - "The intelligent sweeper that sweeps while you rest!".
Roomba by iRobot is an engineering masterpiece with 15 sensors and 5 motors to navigate and clean the floors. It has been stripped apart and there are rumors of a replacement processor so it can be used as a general purpose robot platform. Now the RoboSweep "intelligent" sweeper has redefined intelligence (or lack of it) - the internals have got to be seen to be believed." Very funny.
I had a toy like this when I was a kid. I think we bought it at a flea market for like $15... although it didn't pretend to clean floors, it had a much cooler action robot head that moved its arms!
That has to be the saddest attempt at making a competing product. It uses nothing besides some gears to move around obstacles (no circuitry), uses wipes to clean floor (which don't work well according to website author, says it barely picks up dirt and it only does on the front of wipe), moves slowly, and obviously can't clean anything besides smooth surfaces. Is there a lamest products ever list? This really deserves it.
Question everything.
Well if you can't read the article, it basically says this robosweep thing is a piece of crap. It contains no electronics other then its motor (which apparently has barely enough power to drive the thing) and it works by mechanically shifting gears when it hits a wall so that it can turn. This in an of itself is not so terrible, but according the article the "robot" also doesn't have enough ground clearence for dirt to pass underneath so instead of actually picking up dirt it just pushes it around.
Btw, if you take a look at the link to the ad you'll see some kind of dislcaimer at the bottom explaining how the Roomba is a registered trademark of iRobot and that the RoboSweep thing is not made or endorsed by iRobot. I though this was interesting since no where on thir page do they mention the Roomba except for in this disclaimer. I guess their product is so terrible they afraid of being accused of trying to make iRobot look bad.
The Roomba isn't very good. We have one in the Team Overbot shop, and it's cute, but not very useful. It gets trapped in chair legs, it jams badly if it encounters a cable, and it doesn't clean very well. Even as insect-level intelligence, it's disappointing. It needs at least enough smarts to get itself out of the situations it gets into. As it is, it takes more time dealing with its problems than it takes to vacuum the space with a conventional vacuum.
This will beat the FloorSweeper like a red-headed stepchild. Shizzle me Timbers!.
iRobot also makes the PackBot, a unmanned robust robot for reconnaissance operations in urban terrain.
The robot is developed for the US Military, its DARPA founded, and it runs Linux.
More info here
Personally I find this far more interesting than this "sweeper".
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
I was at a lecture Rodney Brooks gave when he was in Amsterdam almost a year ago. He explained what kind of research he did, and how he incorporated it in his Roomba product.
;-)
Obviously, this RoboSweep thing is a complete fake. It looks like it's advertised on those stupid home shopping programmes (see the official website, the "As Seen On TV" blurb on the packaging, etc).
This leads me to reinforce my suspicion that all products promoted at home shopping programmes are fake and ineffective.
I don't doubt most Slashdotters are like-minded in this respect, but those who know people who order that crap, might want to tell them about the fake cleaning machine, and how that is probably only the tip of the iceberg (crap-berg?).
It actually reminds me of a toy car I used to play with in my youth, that had exactly such a rotating thing with small wheels on it, so the battery-powered car seemed to move in a semi-random fashion. I didn't find that very intruiging even at the age of five.
If you really want to get a cleaning robot, get a Roomba.
With a bit of luck, they'll sell just eight of those RoboSweeps -- to Dr. Zoidberg!
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
But even 1950s tech was ahead of the Robosweep. It did have a single light sensor, and through some clever work by Davis, could be constructed so that when their batteries started to run low, would make their way back to a recharging hut, given that the hut had a bright light in it.
If the robosweep could accomplish as much without any central processor (lack of central processing is, after all, one of the tenets of Brooks subsumption architecture, and thus part of the design of the Roomba), I'm sure Rodney would applaud the feat.
well, that roombacommunity site rocks, while i do enjoy my roomba, it's now going to be made in to a robot and do something else, i'm thinking a wifi-finder, we'll see. here are some pics and vid, next time i post pics, it'll be a franken-roomba. enjoy.
pics
video
cheers,
pt
Pics here. It's kind of slow. Being slashdotted is not a good way to discover that your ISP does bandwidth limiting :-(.
Once the vacuuming brushes are removed the Roomba is much quieter and I am sure that battery life at least doubles. Chris.
Doing a quick eBay search for "robosweep" returns a few listings saying: "ROOMBA ROBOSWEEP INTELLIGENT SWEEPER"
;)
Very very deceptive.....
And look at the crap description.... I almost fell off my chair laughing....
*Similar to Roomba but at a fraction of the price!
RoboSweep is a very affordably priced sweeper, especially compared to other robotic cleaners on the market..
RoboSweep uses built-in intellegence to stay in the room it's sweeping. Just turn it on and it sweeps! (Ya... sweeps your $40 away...)
Of course, at the end:
THIS IS NOT A ROOMBA! IT IS A ROBOSWEEP!
Just when I thought things were bad enough.... more searching finds some place is selling this thing for $46!!
Caveat emptor! A fool and his money are sooooo soon parted on the Internet
You're talking about a guy who named all 268 of his sons "George Foreman".
:) I sold my Salton stock after finding that out. I don't guess his Sons will mind too much that he sold their soul, especially if the republicans get their way with the inheritance tax.
The hilarious part to this is that he has sold the use of the name "George Foreman", in perpetuity, to Salton, Inc for 110 million dollars.
Dumb boxer ain't so dumb, eh?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I remember a toy from the 70s and 80s, which involved a "robot" that ran off of specially shaped cogs and gears. One would determine the distance, a couple others would determine direction (left, right, circle), another would set up a special function (stop, spin turret, flash lights and play sounds), before resuming the pattern again.
Slightly more complicated versions were made for more money, which involved a simple optical reader and a rotating paper disc which the user would mark off spots for distance, turns, etc. If I recall correctly, there were Mindstorm Lego sets that worked on this principle as well.
Why not make a version of the Roomba that does that? It's technically an analog computer, and would be cheap as hell to mass produce. A lot closer to a "real" robot than Robosweep is.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
The RoboSweep people should be hauled in for fraud! ;-)
I saw the pictures of its insides... and basically (from a long childhood of disassembling toy "bump n go" robots) I believe the RoboSweep is worth about $5 bucks, tops.
Do this:
1. Go into your local KayBee or Toys R Us toystore or swapmeet/fleamarket.
2. Buy one of those $5 buck "bump n go" robots/cars.
3. Dissassemble said toy
4. Note the virtually identical setup as the "RoboSweep": battery case, wires, one made-in-China 25 cent motor, little go-round-n-round wheels.
And reading the RoboSweep site http://www.youcansave.com/robosweep.asp, it promises the world out of what is basically a child's cheap-ass toy! Class action anyone?
Trilobyte. European tech kicks ass. Harharhar! :-)
Honestly now: If I'll ever get a vacuumbot it will be this one. This Trilobyte sucker has some serious tech inside. It actually learns the shapes of the floor it cleans and maneuvers through and past furniture. It starts at programmable time (when you're out of the house) and goes back to it's recharge station when finished. THAT is a vacubot. That other one is a toy that will chrush to chunky kibbles if I accidentally step on it. Or make that 'on purpose'.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca