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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.
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.