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Roomba Robot Vacuum Gets Siblings
Victor Tramp writes "Apparently, the cute little robot vacuum by iRobot has siblings now! An article over at Forbes.com goes into some detail about the new Roomba models; featuring the Roomba Pro, which 'is an improvement on the original Roomba, including an intelligent navigation system..', and the Roomba Pro Elite, which is the '...new flagship model. It comes with a remote-control unit that lets you navigate the Roomba around the room, changing cleaning options as it goes.' I have one of the original Roombas, and it actually does a really good job!"
It works great on the medium thickness carpet (as well as the wood and tile) in my home. Cleaning carpet seems to hit the battery harder than cleaning wood, so you can pretty much only get one large and one small room on a charge.
On any surface, it doesn't replace a once every few months hand cleaning with a regular vacuum, but for a once or twice a week cleaning, it really does work.
Have you seen one? I've used the original. As far as I know they have no 'auto charging' capability. You pick it up when it dies and then plug it into the charger. It's very far from worthless though.
You just clean one or two rooms a day, and you don't have to watch it while it's doing it. It's very convenient, even without the auto recharge feature you are talking about. Features like intellegent autocharging and networking probably won't be in consumer vacuums for a little while. (Especially since a viable Roomba competitor hasn't popped up.)
I've seen a demonstration of a robot vacuum cleaner a couple of weeks ago (I can't remember the brand, but it was a yellow robot). This vacuum robot did manage to go back to the recharger. But that was not the only thing it could do, it also dumped the collected dust into a container sitting in the recharger, so you never had to actually do anything with the robot, as it was able to feed itself and get rid of the dust. It was however a tad more expensive than the the roomba (but I can't remember the correct price tag either).
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The Swedish house appliance manufacturer Electrolux has a model called Trilobite which has been around for a couple of years.
I haven't seen this sucker in action, but if memory serves me correctly it should be able to move around your home on flat surfaces, avoid obstacles and return to the power station.
Do you mean this?
Cye Personal Robot
I prefer the Karcher RoboCleaner for one important reason:
It requires almost no manual intervention
You just tell it how often it should go out and clean and once in a while you empty the dirt in the base station. No other interventions are necessary.
Il empties its dirt container itself and recharges itself automatically et the base station.
Details here
Markus
...but in a good way!
I bought a Rooma a couple of weeks ago after the last article that mentioned about the cheap (money-wise and quality-wise) competitor. We have two cats, two dogs, and hardwood floors. We "set it free" each morning as we go out to work. We didn't do it yesterday, and I noticed it as I was lying on the floor...sand and hair. It really does a good job for us.
As far as having the ability to go back and recharge itself when it's done...yeah, it'd be nice, but it works fine for us how it is. Otherwise, we (i.e. my wife) would have to be dragging out the regular vaccuum every day. It does great in terms of just maintaining a sane level of cleanliness.
I can see a future of fleets of these things roaming a hotel cleaning all of the rooms. Sort of reminds me of the robots from Minority Report.
After intentionally disabling the ledge sensors in mine and having it take a tumble down a flight of stairs I can tell you that this is one of the most durable mobile appliances in my house, easily tougher than my normal vacuum cleaner.
I certainly wish iRobot the best of luck with the Roomba, since success with this early model will lead to continuously improved products. I am certainly not against robotic appliances, I also have a Robomower and love it. It has many advantages over a manual mower and no drawbacks (except a bit higher price tag, but the benefits far outweigh this IMHO). It's very quit (I can run it at night), nearly maintenance free (it mulches while it cuts, no bag to empty, no engine to maintain), and completely replaces a standard mower. I long for the day when we have more products like this, but I just didn't think the first gen Roomba was it.
When you lose something irreplaceable, you don't mourn for the thing you lost, you mourn for yourself. - Harpo Marx
We got a Roomba last December, and it took a little while to get our 1st floor completely "roomba-ready". All the kid's toys get thrown in baskets, I pick up a tassled rug and throw it over a radiator, and I use a virtual wall unit to block a threshold that the Roomba *always* gets stuck on (even though it's below the advertised limit). Now, after dinner, we get our entire 1st floor roomba-ready (pick up toys, move chairs, etc.), and all go upstairs for the kid's baths + stories + bedtime. By the time the kid's are in bed, the Roomba's done (45-60 minutes or so). We still have to vacume every other week or so, but the Roomba keeps the floors cleaner between manual cleaning. Sure, I could sweep every night, but the Roomba does it while I'm doing something else. I figure it saves me 10-15 minutes each day, which is great for those of us with small children. So in the past year, I figure the Roomba has saved me 60-90 hours of free time, which translates to about $2-3/hour. If the thing lasts another year without any maintenance costs, then we're talking about $1-1.50/hour. Would I spend a dollar for an extra hour of free time? (I guess I already do!)
It's gotten to the point where my 3-year-old daughter can pick it up, put it in the middle of the floor, and turn it on by herself.