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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!"
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
Cheap UK and US VPS
...really sucks!! :)
The Roomba may do a good job cleaning, but I'm sure it doesn't look very good in a little french maid outfit....um..unless you have a robot fetish or something, I guess.
If Microsoft made a vacuum cleaner, it'd be their only product which would not suck...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
- It can lurk in the dark corners at night and photograph burglars using its infrared lights.
- It can monitor the light levels and tell the lights to brighten or dim accordingly.
- I can surf to it (of course it has wifi and an IP address) and if we get two of them, we can play "robowars" in the hallway.
- The camera can rotate upwards and
"Just cleaning the floor, boss!"
Ceci n'est pas une signature
if it doesn't automatically move over to the re-charging unit when it's running low on power, self-recharge, and then automatically start cleaning again when fully charged, it's worthless IMO.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
[...] 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)...
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
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.
. . . about this robot, and since he is single, he said that this would be the perfect product for any single guy. Until he found out that it is powered on only 30 wats. Then he found out that it probably don't suck that well. :-)
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.. am creeped out by the idea of sentient cleaner robots running around, ever since I saw the 'Paradise Towers' episode of Dr Who where the robots took to cleaning up humans. It's a short step from cleaner robots to plasma gun toting Terminators. Honest (adjusts tin foil hat)
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.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
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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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.
...I could manage to keep our floor uncluttered enough for these to be useful. (In which case I wouldn't need them because it wouldn't be too hard to do it myself.)
One thing occurs to me regards the Roomba - just how well does it stand up to kids? It sounds like a great invention but knowing how much stress kids can put on pieces of equipment. Especially equipment that might attract their attention by moving around of its own accord? Clearly it can't be expected to withstand Little Billy pushing it downstairs just to see what would happen, but can the Roomba's withstand bumps and knocks?
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.
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".
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.