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Roomba Robot Vacuum Gets Siblings

Posted by simoniker on from the original-roomba-gets-jealous-and-sulks dept.

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!"

8 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Packs by rf0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now it would be cool that if you had some of these roming free in an office building and they communicated about what they had done the you could just havea small pack of the robots constatnly cleaning

    Some sort of redundant bug system

    Rus

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  2. Seems cheaper than we think by neglige · · Score: 4, Interesting

    [...] but it's still a bit pricey [...]

    I thought so, too - at first. But the article mentions that the Pro Elite (the 'flagship', other models might be even cheaper) will sell at $250. And that is - to my mind - an acceptable price. A good vacuum cleaner won't be much cheaper.

    I really have to start thinking about getting one. Earlier models sold for several hundred or even thousand dollar. A test would be nice though, because my robo would have to deal with 2 cats (bonus points for hovering up to the sofa and cleaning all the hairs off it)...

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  3. Dyson DC06 Robot? by EddWo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Whatever happened to the Dyson DC06? That was the first robot vacuum I've seen presented and it seemed to have the most intelligence. They don't seem to have sold very many though. Maybe the price put people off.

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  4. DIY roomba by MoobY · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm currently working on a project to mount my handheld vacuum cleaner on top of a robot made with my Lego Mindstorms set. You can program the bot yourself, add some extra intelligence. I'm pretty sure I'll have a robot vacuuming my floors pretty soon, without having to spend the $200 on it. And as an extra, it's great fun building and programming one!

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    1. Re:DIY roomba by bpb213 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Of course, doing it yourself is very fun, and possible to stay under $200 by avoiding legos.
      Just look here for a competition for this type of stuff:
      http://www.botlanta.org/rally2003/vac_phot os.html

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  5. It's time for a Robotics category by Onnimikki · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With so many robotics stories lately (Japan's Proposed 30-Year Robot Program, Robots for Air Force Protection, Swimming Cockroach Robot Developed, etc.), it's time that Slashdot made up a new category as opposed to filing them under "Upgrades".

  6. Re:Didn't like my Roomba by technomancerX · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Interesting... I wonder if there was something wrong with your unit. We've had ours for about 2 weeks and it works great, picking up fuzz and even our dog's hair and leaving clean carpets and hardwood floors. Also, we've run it in an odd shaped hallway as well as in a living room and dining room full of furniture and it did hit everything, you just need to let it run until it tells you it's finished.

    I will agree that the transitions are a bit rocky going from one surface to another. The solution is to use the virtual wall units to block transition spots and run it once on each side of a transition. For example our kitchen is linoleum and our living room is carpeted, so we run it separately in the lving room and kitchen.

    What's really nice about it is that you can close it in a room and let it go and then come back later when it's finished running. That's what we do with the bedrooms in our house. The thing has decreased the time we spend vacuuming by about 90%.

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    .technomancer
  7. Re:Didn't like my Roomba by ashultz · · Score: 2, Interesting


    I had the same problems. It sometimes treated a floor to carpet edge as a wall. It couldn't deal with complicated geometries created by furniture. It didn't pick up anything bigger than a speck.

    If your home already looks like Martha Stewarts - clean, neat, organized - you might want a Roomba. If it doesn't, you'll have to move the furniture and stuff until it does, at which point running the vaccum yourself will take only a few moments and do a better job.

    This is a product for people whose perfect houses have dust, not for people who really would want a robot vaccum.