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Segway vs. Roomba
Jerry23 writes "We all knew it would happen. We just didn't know when. But Second Life's Cory Ondrejka has just blogged The Encounter: At last weekend's Accelerating Change Conference, Dean Kamen's demon seed, the Segway personal transporter, met Helen Greiner's lovechild, the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, in a climactic crash that will echo through the ages.
And I quote: "That night also had what was, for me, the highlight of the conference. I refer, of course, to the ultimate convergence of technology. The perfect connection of human and robot. The consumate collision of 21st century geek products. I am referring, of course, to the moment that a Segway ran over Roomba."
"
"Spent the weekend at a fascinating conference - Accelerating Change 2004 ...
... A Roomba was busy cleaning one of the meeting rooms, so it was interesting to actually observe one up close...
... there were two Segways available to the conference participants ...
There were some spectacular collisions, but none topped the moment that a fast moving Segway, slightly out of control, met Roomba, zipping across the floor like a suicidal squirrel. Amazingly, neither seemed the worse for the wear. The Segway popped up and over while Roomba emitted a few beeps from button presses but both continued on their way. Impressive engineering on several levels, actually. Roomba, for surviving the impact
unharmed and Segway for not tipping over."
Saves you from reading the articleI'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
I have one and it's actually incredibly effective on hard surfaces. It doesn't really rely on suction power, more on a rotating brush, although it does maximize its suction power by confining it to a squeegee-ish vacuum strip.
The thing that makes the Roomba totally kick-ass is this little spinning brush it has sticking out of the side. This brush, which is mounted to a flexible rubber piece, does edges and corners far better than any traditional vacuum. Because of this, the roomba can vacuum a room with wood or tile floors far more thoroughly than a person with a regular vacuum.
It's running kind of slow, here's the text in case of ./ing:
Segway v. Roomba
Spent the weekend at a fascinating conference - Accelerating Change 2004. For those who haven't heard of it before, the Institute for the Study of Accelerating Change is an educational nonprofit base in LA that focuses on creating an "informed, optimistic, and empowered world community." The tautological nature of that mission might give you pause, but after meeting the volunteers, speakers, and participants, you come away with the realization that this is a group of very technologically minded folks who are want to make the world a better place.
So, the Linden Lab folks got along with them famously!
With Dr. James Cook at the controls, we did an extensive demo at the Friday night Tech Night and had hours of great questions about Second Life and the community from the many attendees.
On Saturday, I gave the first of two virtual world keynotes, focusing on the inevitable shift of production and community into digital worlds, and Robin spoke on Virtual Learning and Community with the Themis Group's Nova Barlow. Forterra's Robert Gehorsam was supposed to attend as well, but did not. Second Life was the subject of many discussions throughout the day.
Many of the other presentations either directly or indirectly applied to Second Life. iRobot's Helen Greiner is an always interesting speaker and the success of Roomba is a great example of smart geeks proving the rest of the world wrong. A Roomba was busy cleaning one of the meeting rooms, so it was interesting to actually observe one up close. In many ways, it behaves almost exactly the way simple creatures in SL do and probably uses many of the same algorithms. It tended to get a little confused if it encountered lots of power cables and tried to eat my backpack -- succeeding in swallowing most of one of the straps -- but didn't seem at all evil. More on Roomba in a momement. Helen also talked about the next steps for iRobot, including small, autonomous, networked robots used to explore spaces. This was pretty cool, so during the next talk I popped into SL via WiFi and built a small room, bought some appliances for it, and then coded up some small explorer bots to move around in it. Bits are so much easier than atoms! Not an accurate simulation, but amusing, and a screen shot ended up in my slide deck.
David Brin spoke several times on Saturday, first by himself, where he had fun poking holes in bad science. Next, he was in discussion with the EFF's Brad Templeton about The Transparent Society -- the idea, not the book, although David mentioned his website enough times that his talk sometimes felt like a commercial. I'm sympathetic to Brad's position, but I worry that most of David's arguments about the direction we are headed are hard to argue with. Second Life offers an interesting place to learn about how societies form when ubiquitous surveillance is possible but social norms are used to enable privacy anyway.
Dan Gillmor gave a great talk related to his new book, We the Media. Clearly, he and Hamlet could have a fascinating discussion about the nature of journalism and bloging in digital worlds.
That night also had what was, for me, the highlight of the conference. I refer, of course, to the ultimate convergence of technology. The perfect connection of human and robot. The consumate collision of 21st century geek products.
I am referring, of course, to the moment that a Segway ran over Roomba.
Since Segway was one of the sponsors, there were two Segways available to the conference participants Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was pretty amazing to watch, because when they worked perfectly, they were stunning. Spry old ladies leapt aboard and were soon zipping about, completely confident in their driving, only to be knocked to the floor when they dismounted while holding the turn control. There were some spectacular collisions, but none topped the moment that a fast moving Segway, slightly o
Everybody knows the Segway. It is the most overhyped scooter that the world has ever seen. It all started with a claim that the device would revolutionize the way we build cities. At first it was called only "it". Then later it had its named changed to Segway, when the world was finally told about what it was: a scooter and a really expensive scooter at that!
So over the years, various shameless websites have astroturfed for the Segway - slashdot being one of them.
To make a long story short, slashdot hasn't really astroturfed for the Roomba, and thank god! I have owned a Roomba for over a year. The telling thing is that I have only used it for about a total of 3 months. See, the Roomba has one serious problem: it likes to malfunction. I take care of it, clean it, etc... but the god damn over priced piece of crap breaks down all the time. I have it on its second RMA so far, and iRobot likes to take their damn time replacing their shoddy products.
To make a long story short, avoid the Roomba until it sees a few more iterations and improvements: especially improvements to reliability. Also, it is probably a good idea to avoid the Segway too, considering that you can get an electric scooter for far less than a Segway costs, and anything that needs to be hyped and astroturfed as much as the Segway... probably has no true merit.
It sounds like you're talking about the first generation of the Roomba's.. similar to what I have. It's a pain to charge, and the canister is woefully small.
The second generation Roomba claims to have a dirt canister that is 3 times as large, and can automatically locate it's charging base and recharge for you. I have not yet tried one, but as my first generation one died recently, I can only hope that someone gets me one for Christmas.
But not by much. They had one at the Tech Museum (downtown San Jose) that they would let you try out for a minute or two. There really isn't that much to it. The docent explained the concept in about 20 words and away I went.
The day that I was there the place was empty and I got to ride it for a good bit. Controlling it is surprisingly intuitive: lean forward to go forward, lean back to slow (or reverse) and a twist handle to turn. I ran it around in circles and between obstacles (they had cones set up) and basically in the couple of minutes I was on it, I had it mostly down. Getting on and off are the only tricky parts.
They're pretty cool, but I don't think in my case the "need" for one matches the cost.
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The newer roombas (Discover, et.al.) do a pretty good job of doing multiple rooms, and have a somewhat larger dust bin over the original units.. I'm not sure how much dust/dirt you expect to get out of each room, but if you run it at least weekly it should be able to handle the load.
We run ours every night after dinner (we have two children under age 5, so we need to sweep up the debris every night to keep any critters at bay), and the thing does our entire 1st floor (about 4 12x15 foot rooms, all hardwoods -- carpets take more time/power) in about an hour. The older batteries used to last about 6-8 months before loosing about half their capacity, but iRobot is supposed to have a "new" battery that will last twice as long.
The maintenace was an issue on the earlier models, though. The brass bushings/bearings on the counter-rotating brushes would get fouled with hair/dust, and eventually start heating up. If they weren't cleared at least weekly, they would heat up so much that the plastic bracket holding the bushings would melt, and the brushes would eventually not engage the unit's drive socket.
The newer roombas have a much better design, and can be cleaned more easily (i.e. without a needing a screwdriver), and they seek the recharging base when they are low on power.
A lot of people like to point out this little piece of drivel, but it's complete BS. Considering the center of gravity of a Segway with a rider is about 3-4 feet off the ground, that wheel would be absolutely usesless in keeping you from going over the handle bars hitting the tiniest bump. Or even stopping. Or keeping you from tipping over backwards going up the smallest of hills. You could make it just as stable with a third wheel, if you were determined to go that route, but it would never be nearly as compact. Alternatively, you could make is just as compact, as in Maddox's picture, and give up pretty much all of your stability.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I've been giving demos on Segway HTs for 2+ years and have never had anyone fall off of one. Of course, demos are usually given on the slowest key (black) and with a little instruction. If people just put a couple of Segway HTs in a room, turned them on with the fastest (red) key, and gave no instruction, it's no wonder people were having a little difficulty with them. It does require some minimal instruction and I would never let a beginner on the fastest key.
The beginner's oscillation effect is well-known and easily controlled (and explained) if someone was there helping them. Apparently nobody was and everyone was left to their own devices... which is a shame, since it's a more enjoyable experience when you have someone who can help you get the most from it.
I can't understand why anybody would get on one of these and speed as fast as they can across the room with so little experience the first time! Sounds just plain stupid or poor judgment (or a little of both). Like getting into a car for the first time at 15 and taking it up to 90 mph on your neighborhood sidestreet. Gee, I wonder if you'd increase the chances of your getting into an accident if you do that? Who's to blame, the car or the inexperienced driver??
I have one, though I haven't had it very long (just a few days, once through the house so far). It's the newer discovery model (the white 4210). Based my experience so far, it's much more than a conversation piece. We may be 5 years behind schedule, but I finally have my robot housecleaner! Woo!
It doesn't hold a *lot*, but it didn't totally fill up when I just let it have at the downstairs (which hadn't been done for several weeks, so it was pretty bad) all at once, so it's got enough capacity to be useful; it's a bagless vac anyway, so you just empty it after it finishes up.
I watched it wander between the living room/dining room/kitchen until the novelty wore of (and/or until I got done with dishes), and it seemed to be doing fine so I went to bed. I found it on on it's charger the next morning, and my floor looked lots better... it had even founds its way into all the closets I'd left open (I never seem to bother to do them, so it was pretty obvious that it had been in there from the lack of dust-bunny civilization). Not bad at all as far as coverage went, I couldn't didn't find anything it had missed.
So, I next sent it through a room that had just been cleaned with my upright (an oreck XL, should you care), to judge it's suction. I figured this would give me a better feel for how it actually worked as a vacuum, though I didn't expect it to come back with much. While It didn't have near as much as from the living room, but it still pulled up quite a lot of hair and general crud.
It does lack for raw power (it's on batteries after all!), but on the plus side it's pretty quiet (I'd estimate somewhere around 70dB?). The actual air inlet has two flexible rubber 'lips' that constrain the airflow to a very small cross-section, which helps it have a decent pressure differential even without a lot of fan power. It also has what seems to me like a much better than normal brush design. There are two brushes spinning opposite directions, one that's a pretty typical bristle brush, and one that's slightly sticky rubber in a paddle-wheel sort of design, probably to help debris things flying back off the bristle brush and swing it into the suction.
So, in short, I'm reasonably impressed with it, though it will take more time to tell if it's really vacuuming well or just sweeping on the surface. Either way it's damned good at sweeping, far better than my normal vacuum at getting hair worked free. If it succeeds in keeping the surface clean (I'm sure it will clean more often than I would have!) there won't be near as much to get ground down in the first place. So, at this point I'm definitely giving it a "+1 Finally!" rating...
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