Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.