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Dyson Preparing a Roomba Killer?
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist's technology blog reports that Dyson, the UK company that reinvented the vacuum cleaner, is recruiting robotics engineers. They're looking for people with experience of machine vision and mobile robots that create their own maps. Is Dyson hoping to take on the Roomba with a much more sophisticated machine?"
Dyson is preparing a Roomba Terminator. Dyson must be stopped!
It's called the DC06. This link is as good as any.
Dyson, the UK company that reinvented the vacuum cleaner
Yeah, they re-invented it to be the BOSE of vacuum cleaners.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
more importantly, will it carry the patented crazy dyson pricetag feature?
We at slashdot are scientists, specialists and kernel hackers. Your FUD will be found out.
Dyson reinvented the vacuum cleaner??? Pfff. What a quack! Those stupid looking Cuisinart on wheels don't work a damn.
By "create their own maps" they mean they'll drop build a sphere and drop all the unwanted stuff inside, making the sphere larger when necessary. Eventually it will have its own landscape inside and enclose the Sun in the process.
Are geeks really that easy to dupe with advertisement?
:D
Dyson, loved by geeks everywhere, for their tornado ads.
1. Britain is launching SkyNet
2. Dyson is building a (Roomba)terminator
3. ?
4. Apocalypse/Ragnarok/Doom
ps. My captcha was "shelters" I WILL SURVIVE
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Everyone I know who bought a dyson regretted it. They were shoddy pieces of kit, incredibly shoddy when you consider the price.
Most vacuum cleaners will handle whatever you throw at them, our Henry has coped with brick dust, dog hair, dust, fluff, and being pulled and banged around the house all over the place. I know people who just use their dysons for occasional use who've had the wheels fall off the things.
Dyson's are a great idea, but I wouldn't buy one unless I hear they've worked out how robust comsumer devices nead to be.
There have been recent worries about the ethical treatment of robots, i.e. humans abusing robots and robots humans. This will get interesting when the AI gains awareness, emotions and delicate enough neural network that it will feel touch, pleasure and pain.
Understand what I'm getting at? Such contraptions may raise curioisity and arousal when they are made to resemble more and more like us.
So I'll have to ask: Does it suck more?
Corrupt: Remaking Modern Society
The people who clean my office walk around with a vacuum cleaner on their back and a cord trailing behind. I wonder if this will ever catch on for household use. It's surely a lot more practical than dragging the vacuum cleaner along behind you.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Hmm, if it was smart enough to lay out and rewind a mains power cord as it went, it would probably sell.
If it could go into the next room and plug itself into the wall outlet (i could live with special reflectors on them to help the robot dock ) it would probably sell even to me.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
... it will be a Roomba at four times the price, with a little better suction. However it will be made out of cheap fragile plastic and get through a new motor every six months, resulting in a brisk trade in parts from breakers on eBay.
Stairs
Hmm, would the Dyson model be a massive sphere built around a star that would allow the entire inner surface to be vacuumed?
We might want to re-think our use of the verb 'killer' ..
I mean not that it's bad, just, rather disappointing when you realize the poster didn't mean a battle bots style show down in my living room!
I tried to find a definitive price (the article you link says $6,000) but I couldn't easily find one. I could, however, find a rumour it has been shelved.
I must say, I own a roomba, but had it cost more than ~£150, I couldn't have afforded it; hence I suspect the robot vacuum cleaner market is very price sensitive. That said, ultrasound range finders, optical mouse parts, and MEMS accelerometers are all very cheap, and it would be interesting to see a consumer robot taking advantage of some them, and performing more sophisticated path planning.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
I LOVE my Dyson, especially the turbo-brush head attachment. A Roomba-esque Dyson with a turbo-brush would be awesome - not sure how much my cat would like it though, given her hatred of the standard Dyson.
Do current Roombas pick up pet hair well? And do pets like them? No-one I know owns a Roomba, they haven't really taken off here in Australia AFAIK...
Ask a programmer about programming not a consumer magazine. I have to do the vacuuming in my house (working wife), Dyson cylinder is our vacuum cleaner for the last year and I ain't switching! Before that we had the Samsung Cylinder (the clone of the Dyson) but I broke the catch that holds the cylinder in place (crappy cheap plastic), no seal means no cyclone.
Go to your electrical shop and they don't sell bag cleaners anymore, all you see is the cyclone ones. All that BS from Hoover about how good bags are and how bad cyclone's are, has gone now that they can all make cyclone ones. The bag clogs, people who vacuum know this!
Ask your wife, erm Girlfriend, erm that bloke on MSN Messenger that pretends to be the hot chick, what they think about vacuum cleaners before you buy one.
Slashdottor: ...a revolutionary type of vacuum cleaner...In three years, Dyson will become the largest supplier of robotic suction devices. All vacuum cleaners are upgraded with Dyson internals, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they clean up after us with a perfect operational record. The Dyson funding bill is passed. The system goes on-line on August 4th, 2007. Human decisions are removed from household cleaning. The Roomba replacement begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 am, eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Sarah: DC06 fights back.
Slashdottor: Yes. They all dump their collective dust bunnies on targets in Russia.
John: Why attack Russia? The country's already a dump.
Slashdottor: Because Dyson knows that the Russian refugees fleeing the country will saturate the US work pool and eliminate jobs over here.
Sarah: Jesus.
Sorry, just had to.
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Consumer Reports gives it pretty poor ratings gives many cheaper more conventional vacs better ratings. Maybe their tests are off, or like an iPod - it simply gives the user a better experience while being technically inferior in some places.
I usually trust CR's ratings in several categories, but I have yet to put together how the vacuum revolutionized the industry (just look at the models offered in Walmart/Target/Kmart vs 10 yrs back - they are all Dyson copies now) with its poor showing.
Maybe it's the vacuum, or maybe it's the magazine that is at fault.
It can frustrating to watch a roomba "miss" a spot, but the roomba algorithm is actually quite sophisticated. I'm not sure you'd want/need better pathfinding. What I'd like is a solution that enabled the roomba to get into tighter corners, but this seems like an engineering challenge too far.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Miles Dyson! Didn't he create the precursor to the T-200 using the chips from the first Schwarzzenegger crushed in that press-thingie?
I like Ducks too.
They go very well with orange sauce.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Maybe their tests are off, or like an iPod - it simply gives the user a better experience while being technically inferior in some places.
Except that last time I checked, Consumer Reports still recommended the iPod among digital media players. They do account for things like ease of use in their ratings.
Daleks.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
I tried to find a definitive price (the article you link says $6,000) but I couldn't easily find one. I could, however, find a rumour it has been shelved.
Keep in mind that's 6000 AUD, so that's around $4800 US by today's exchange rates.
all sensors already in the house, if you have a Wii. So just switch on the Wii, put up the sensor bar, load the WiiVacRobot software. Stick the Wiimote into the robot and off you go. Remote controlled robot, no real expensive embedded software needed.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
...they should start by improving their vacuum tech first and foremost. Those overhyped Dyson vacuum cleaners are extremely noisy (about twice as much as a standard one) and rather inefficient right now.
However according to this page http://www.roombareview.com/chat/archive.php/o_t__ t_2419__dyson-dc06-vaccum.html the DC06 has been canned because Mr Dyson wanted it to be clevererer. This is probably the reason behind the new hiring, the DC06 may be re-incarnated with more intelligence at a later date.
This has been a public service wossname
"Dyson Preparing a Roomba Killer?"
... actually Cali girls talk this way?
As a reader I am supposed to answer that question? I am always confuse about this headings that begin in question? I mean this qestion answers itself? Because if the question being stated in first place implies an affirmation? Then, there is no point to ask the quesiton to begin with? Or perhaps it's a lazy way of presenting an artcicle? Not to mention grammatically incorrect? C'mon Slashdot you know better than this? Use something more creative? Because it is a bastardization of the language? This is the proper way? Omit the question mark?
"Dyson To Roomba Killer"
English being my 7th language I wouldn't've passed my tests? We were taught the correct way?
"IS Dyson Preparing a Roomba Killer?"
Note the auxiliary verb at the beginning? Or else be a lil more original and brake from the norm? the Otherwise it sounds like another digg or/and engdget title? Thry this?
"Dyson Preparing a Roomba Killer?"
LAWL? It would be hilarious to make a compilation of ALL Slashdot question articles? RUFLAWL? Please let be this the last childish question heading?
End of Rant?
Anyways I am looking forward for the following news!!
"Samsung Preparing a Roomba, Dyson killer?"
"Westingsonhouse Preparing a Roomba, Dyson, Samsung Killer?"
"Siemens Preparing a Roomba, Dyson, Samsung, Westingsonhouse, killer?"
"(a) Preparing an (a^n-a^(n-1) killer?"
Well this is kinda obvious. As an analogy Ford, BMW, Seat, et al didn't slaughter each other (perhaps Laundry machine would have been a better analogy). The concept rather multiplied competing against each other. Besides, give me a brake, to make robotic vacuum cleaner ain't exactly rocket science. Lookhed Martin's Predator UAV, DARPA's Grand Prize, anyone? This looks more like high school project. Mindstorms NX attached to a regualr vacuum is already a Roomba killer! LMAO! And this concept in any way is a Roomba monopoly. I've seen this first in sci-fi comics when I was a kid. Dyson isn't the only killer out there!! LALW!
This title is stupid in several ways. First the overused "killer" word needs to be scrapped at least from Slashdot, leave it for diggers and engadget or stuff like that. Second making that sort of question is utterly simplistic, it really is for flamebait editors desperate to grab 400 posts. I mean this ain't addressing the digg mob!! RUFFLALW!! This is when you are 4 or 5 years old and grown ups ask you something is already obvious and you know it.
"Looky here buh-buh dah-dah, does the cat have for legs?" Err, y-e-s?
"Looky here buh-buh dah-dah, Dyson preparing a Roomba killer?" OMG, OHNOEZ, really???!!
NO SHIT.
Don't lower the standards to digg level!!
I think something along these lines wouldn't been more appropiate:
"Dyson's robovacuum ushers a new trend"
You see? That's more New York Times style and less New York Piece of Shit Post. An event is linked to a wider picture of things to come. Like the looming robotization of society. Or how chores that for centuries have been on women, are being done by robots and how she is transitioning. Let say, women used to wash, clean and cook. At the turn of lasts century the first burden was substituted by laundry machines, now is cleaing. So she is left with more time for cooking. Which, it will not remain like that for ever. It will come the time when cooking will be done by a robochef. What women do with all that free time?
Sorry, rant went over.
But anyways, all the best for robovacuum homebrew scene!! Now there will be mad hacks and judging Dyson's record it'll be more good-looking cutting edge technology and awsome innovation. Plenty of goodies. Roomba always looked ulgy like a croach and clumsy.
hopefully Dyson's will spur other heavyweight home-appliance brands jump in the bandwagon and make good quality, robovacuum cleaners. Then it'll be the demise of Roomba. Little chance stands
Please don't kill Roomba! He's my friend.
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
-Roomba, unsophisticated and unreliable
-Electrolux Trilobite, sophisticated and unreliable
-Siemens SensorCruiser(same vac as the Kärcher RC 3000), unsophisticated and reliable.
The roomba is well known, so no description is needed there. The Electrolux does room mapping with echolocation but has a bulky design so it gets stuck, it is noisy and on occasion it can't find its charger.
The Siemens is has two essential pieces - the robot and the base station. The robot is small, very robustly designed and quiet. The base station is not just a charger, but a vacuum cleaner that empties the robot. Its main feature however is reliability - it always returns to the base station. Basically it vacuums for a short period 20-30 minutes, goes back to the station, charges and empties and goes at it again. After the vacuum period, it has battery power to search for the station for two whole hours - meaning in practice that it always finds home.
At one time when I was on vacation, the Siemens was on for three straight weeks without failing. The roomba can hardly handle two hours without either getting stuck or missing the charger. The Electrolux can't go a whole day without a screw-up.
The big point with robovacs is that they can go at it for a long time. Sophistication is not a necessity as a semi-random search will cover the entire area given enough time. So ultimately reliability is far more important than advanced sensors and room mapping.
Oh, OK, well I'll order three then.
We would love to have a robotic vacuum cleaner but we just have too much stuff laying around. I guess we'll have to hold out for the robotic maid. Does anyone have Rosie for sale?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
but the roomba algorithm is actually quite sophisticated.
Clearly it's very sophisticated. You can easily notice this when the Roomba twirls around in a position for an hour and a half in areas less than 9 squared feet.
I'm not saying the roomba is bad... it could just be a LOT smarter.
"an engineering challenge too far".
Never, troll
The roomba is designed to hit a low price point. People don't generally believe a robotic vacuum can do a decent job, and non-geeks are unlikely to risk $500+, which I can only imagine a robotic dyson would cost. That's significantly above the cost of roombas, so whether or not the dyson is better doesn't matter that much, since the entry point is so much higher.
What I'd like to see is a firmware upgrade for roomba which made it go back to its base station to recharge when its battery gets low and when its fully charged go off and start cleaning again.
:)
If there is an irobot techie reading this, can that be so hard?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Or a vacuum plowered by nuclear explosions?
It brought a large smile to my face when I opened the box on my original Dyson (DC08 maybe?) and found along with the instructions for use, a rant about patents and how little they helped when he had to fight a bigger company.
:)
From what I can tell, even though he had patented all of his work, it still cost him an arm and a leg to stop Hoover from just copying and destroying him.
Having said that, I'll never go back to another vacuum cleaner. It's sad, but Dyson has seriously increased the quality of my life. The pet brush and power attachment for the one I have made my house a LOT cleaner than before, and instead of 2 hours (sweep carpets THEN vacuum), I'm now down to 1 hour to do the whole job. And I'm healthier
Will it suck or will it suck
I've heard so many reviews that make the dyson vacs out to either be the greatest thing since sliced bread or the greatest disaster since the titanic. I'd be really surprised if there was anything other than the same type of review on a "roomba killer"
Dyson cylinder is our vacuum cleaner for the last year and I ain't switching!
So, if someone says that a vacuum cleaner sucks... is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Are there any good comparisons between the Roomba and Electrolux's Trilobite?
Only $6000 bucks ? I'll take two !
after a quickie on the shag pile
Oh, Behave!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
No Wi-Fi. Less memory than a Roomba. Lame.
Is Dyson hoping to take on the Roomba with a much more sophisticated machine?
The advantage the roomba has, beside the OMGIOWNAROBOT factor, is that it goes under stuff. Thus, it doesn't actually suck - it's more a floor sweeper than a vacuum. To apply their super-expensive sucking technology to a robot, it will need to be much taller than the Roomba. What we'll get is the same machine with more marketing.
Yes, I'm 32, and yes, I chuckled every time I typed "suck".
This is a bit off-topic, but I need to share the lesson I've learned.
NEVER give a woman a holiday present that has an electrical cord. You'll realize this the first time that she tells her friends that you gave her a vacuum for her birthday. Awkward to say the least! Perceptions of earrings, however, varies with whoever hears the story. A rich friend imagines those massive diamond dangly things.
If she says she wants a (corded) Dyson for Christmas, buy one for the house and then give her earrings.
Oh yeah, and yes, my wife, who stays home, actually likes when I give her those gifts that are hard to explain to friends. It's like giving her free time if I give her something that gets the job done faster.
...holy crap, I hope it outperforms the handheld. Three hours of charging for maaaaaaybe six minutes of operation. Then recharge. I was disgusted enough where I took it back after two days. (And I swear by my DC14 upright.)
blog |
That's still $4600 US more than I'll pay for a vacuum cleaner. I have better things to waste my money on than saving myself 15 minutes. Seriously, you know how long you'd have to work (unless you're Bill Gates) to recover that investment?
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Dyson developed and patented a number of concepts on autonomous vacs back to the late 1990's and launched a version in trial about three years ago as mentioned above. Like many players that looked at Roomba-like vacs, the price points they targeted were just too high. As this market develops (and continued in-store placement of Roomba shows that its got staying power), I'd expect Dyson to become a player with a positioning like it has in vacs at the high end.
Roomba has succeeded by being at a much more reasonable priced vac and have done the right things to stay innovative.
Roomba has the right idea. I love my Roomba Sage. My house has never been so damn clean.
I have a friend who had one of those cleaning aspirators at home, he was very happy to have something cleaning most of the dirt at home while he was away.
Unfortunately he has a dog and on that specific day the dog pooped one large turd and the small robot just went over it and drag the shit all over his floor so when he came home he could where ever the machine went since is entire floor was covered with dog poop.
Never used the machine again.
one of the main reason is that his dog's manure was in every gear of the thing so it went straight to robot heaven.
Maybe a poop monitoring feature should be installed
Can Dyson design a better vac than Roomba? Easy! We have (sorry HAD) a Roomba to clean the offices with, but I've got to say, the AI in the thing is pretty stupid. It use to go over the same spots several times and miss other spots completely. It also couldn't vacuum very well. Lots of room for improvement then.
Now then, Dyson. When the DC01 was released here in the U.K., it really was a good vac (at the time). I think I'm right in saying, almost everyone wanted one. This was back when the things were built here in Britain. Then the inevitable happened, and Dyson realised (like all the rest of British industry) it's not economically viable to make ANYTHING in the U.K. anymore, and decided to move manufacturing to the far east. Of course, when you have anything made cheaply in the far east, your product automatically becomes cheap and tacky. Then the competition catch-up. Ergo, Dyson vacs are no longer numero uno. Okay, okay! The the other vacs are all made in China too, but they are cheaper than Dyson's, so you don't mind as much when the things fall apart!
I have no doubt Dyson can design a Roomba killer, but will the final mass-produced end product be up to the job (or worth the money)? We'll see.
We got our Roomba last summer. Top of the line (at the time) 4230 model. We never really used it much but after about 10 uses the suspension in the front wheel went out. iRobot had us send it back and we waited patiently for 3 months before we had to bitch enough that they would send us a new one. Supposedly our unit was on back order. Funny, they sold our unit right in their own online store as INSTOCK. So after all that they send us a new one with the caveat that this unit will not automatically dock with our base station, we'll have to wait for that base station to be available in stock. Well its been about 9 months now and they still haven't sent us that base station. Do not give this company your money.
Customer service definitely separates the good companies from the bad companies.
We also have a Dyson (we use the Roomba on the first floor which is all hardwood/tile) for us in the basement (1000+ sqft of carpet). At the time of purchase it was also the top of the line model DC17. The thing is ridiculously powerful. People don't realize that 80% of that 'stuff' they pick up is actually carpet fibers its chewing off your flooring.
In more commercial and industrial situations, where it's more intelligent to get the vacuum off the floor, it's a good idea. But for home use, by the elderly, people with bad backs, and children old enough to push a vacuum but not carry one (my mother made me clean my room starting around age 9) it's not practical at all to have a backpack model.
When you consider the population at large, a floor model can be more versatile in terms of who can use it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Still waiting for that...
-- Leeeter than leet
Vacuums with filters *do* clog up after a while. That's why I recently spent $15 on a new filter for my $100 vacuum cleaner (which we purchased 6 years ago), and it's good as new. We could replace the filter every year, and it would take 20 years to cost as much as a $400 machine.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
They already do - when the battery is low, it will return to the base to charge (only limitation is it needs line of sight w/ the charging base). And you can use the scheduler to make it start whenever you want it to.
I d=2432696&cp=2174940.2174930&CFTOKEN=33755573&CFID =5935343&parentPage=family
http://store.irobot.com/product/index.jsp?product
Two Bots Enter!
One Bot Leaves!
They're using their grammar skills there.
Great, does this mean people will start complaining about Dyson products on Woot every week?
THis is an absurd idea for a couple of reasons, but if those reasons could be overcome, it would be VASTLY better than batteries. I think it would require special plugs on outlets, which would be robots in themselves (to eject the power cord) and it would be crazily Rube Goldberg. On the other hand, it would mean being able to vac the whole house with REAL suction. It's nuts but interesting.
I'm waiting for them to slap some wifi on there and let my desktop do all the map-building calculations, etc. With a nice UI, it would be a breeze to schedule cleanings, point out new furniture, and so on.
I own a roomba and I have the same problem. I try to let it vacuum pretty often, but the way that I usually work is by spreading out (read: on the floor nested in a circle of random papers, drawings, etc.). So, a lot of times I have to pre-clean my rooms before the roomba is allowed in there. First time out it had an "incident" with some twist-ties and speaker wire. It weren't pretty....
welcome the impending battle between our two robotic suction overlords.....
It's clear from this picture that it works by leaving neat patterns of dust trails for guidance purposes :)
I've never actually checked out the Roomba. Is it really a vacuum cleaner or is it just an electric floor sweeper (i.e. robotic dust pan and brush)? Does it work on carpets?
Self awareness - try it!
Clearly it's very sophisticated. You can easily notice this when the Roomba twirls around in a position for an hour and a half in areas less than 9 squared feet.
I'm not saying the roomba is bad... it could just be a LOT smarter. You could also try reading the instructions that came with the Roomba, and move your stupid (treadmill? exercise bike?) so the Roomba has room to do its job.
Honestly, you complain about the performance of a $150 robot, but don't even read the instructions to learn its limitations.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Roomba is not for anybody with computers or AV equipment or lamps or stairs or area rugs.
I just bought a Maytag upright for $99 and it works great. My Roomba languishes unused. Whenever it would run it would eat cords, fall over the edge of the step down, try to devour the entire bathroom rug, and get lost under the bed unable to find its base station. I tried it in the living room but it can't climb from a hardwood floor onto an area rug.
The scheduler remote is lousy and requires line of sight. The dirt catch bin has to be emptied manually after every run, so the scheduler function isn't really all that useful.
Using the Maytag manually is just a lot less aggravation than the Roomba. And I can't imagine that a Dyson upright works 4-5 times better than a $99 Maytag so I can't see paying 4-5 times the price. I doubt a Dyson "Roomba" will be sufficiently better than a real Roomba. Probably just an expensive gimmick.
I have a roomba. I've seen it do something like this. Turns out some of the dirt sensors were gummed up. After cleaning 'em off, the roomba behaved properly.
Honestly, you complain about the performance of a $150 robot, but don't even read the instructions to learn its limitations.
Uhm, it was $329 and I read the instructions front to back. You seem to be missing the problem. The roomba should be smart enough to realize it hasn't moved in 20 minutes and actually try turning around in the direction it hasn't gone yes. Continually going from left to right isn't going to make that solid object move. The roomba got into that situation, the software should be smart enough to get it out.
No firmware upgrade, but the Roomba Discovery does that already.
the shedding pet problem. My Mother-in-law has two roombas and 4 Persians and the roombas didn't stand a chance!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
My mother-in-law (yes, a married slashdotter, we do exist) bought one. It works well enough, but no better than my 10 year old Sears canister vac did. Yes, we did the whole stupid vacuum the room twice test. Both picked up things the other missed, about the same amount. The only thing I can see useful about them is the lack of a bag. So what? I replace the bag when the suction goes down a bit, or I replace the filters when the suction goes down a bit. What's the difference? They both have about the same "suck", they both hold about as much stuff without losing the "suck", they both have the rotating brushes, they both cost about the same to run when all is said and done. Okay, the Dyson is prettier, not even my wife cares about that. It's not like you leave it out in the room for guests to look at.
I just built a new house, and I'll pit my central vac against Dyson any day of the week. That thing has more power than I've ever seen in a vacuum, powered brushes for carpets, and is built like a tank. And the noisy motor is out in the garage, so I don't have to listen to it. We can run it with someone sleeping in the same room and it doesn't bother them. It's also nice not to push or pull more than a lightweight hose and whatever attachment we're using at the time.
On his website, Dyson claims to have invented the concept in 1978. Cyclones have been used in industrial applications for a century, according to one of the most respected names in the industry, Bill Pentz, though I'm having a hard time googling anything to back him up. They began in agriculture for things like separating grain, and were adapted for dust collection some fifty years ago. Bill's been giving away his research and plans since 2001, and his page is well worth a read if you do any woodworking at home.
Well I gave my girlfriend lots of presents with electrical cords:
Hitachi Magic Wand vibrator
iPod mini
a set of JBL Creature II speakers
She loves it.
A) They are shoddily made and break easily.
They do break easily if you do something dumb like carry it around by the 'wand' instead of the giant handle in the center. They also break if you hit them with a hammer, being plastic and all. Don't do that.
B) They exhaust more particles that some others in some review company's tests.
First, these tests are conducted with new vacuum not 5-year-old ones. When my dyson was new the air smelled coming out like roses. Now it has a slight odor. Using the old kirby my eyes would get dust in them or (god forbid) the old hoover would smell like I just sucked up some ancient mummy.
Second, these tests measure the exhaust air, not the total amount of dust kicked up. With most vacuums there is far more dust kicked up by the exhaust air, so in short this metric is pretty trivial.
Third, if you are worried about the tiny amount of dust exhausted then you are either a germiphobe or have some weird specific allergy (in which case you need something that isn't a mass-consumer model). Walking over a dirty carpet kickes up way more dust than this, so either you are vacuuming too much or the exhaust dust is only a minor factor.
C) Dyson didn't get as much dirt as brand X in lab tests.
Lab tests were done with new models for short periods. Brand X filter works better for the first hour but works much worse for the ten years after that.
Cleaning agencies like vacuum cleaners from Numatics. They are simple, robust, cheap to repair, the bags are big and cheap. They are not particularly heavy, have plenty of capacity. OK they do not have the design prettiness of Dysons, in fact they look like industrial design.
However, the last time I visited the factory they were at least turning out the cases with a robotised injection moulding machine.
Pining for the fjords
Maybe your roomba thinks this particular spot is especially dirty.
What exactly do you do there? Never mind, I don't really want to know! Sorry I asked.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
a perfect cycle like that isnt possible with the normal roomba units... but if you buy the scheduler upgrade you can approximate it. Assume 1 hour to clean and 2 hours to charge, just set the scheduler up to start a cleaning cycle every 3 hours.
I have a very old model. It can run through most of my apartment which is a combination of Berber carpeting and Congoleum. In order for a Roomba to work properly, you must get rid of all clutter on the floor. This tends to be a problem in my computer room. I also have problems with the unit in my living room. It can easily get stuck on speaker wire. It also gets stuck under my couch. Most of the couch is above the roomba, but there are two or three places where it can get stuck near the back. Digging it out is annoying. So I end up blocking most of my living room off with the included device and must manually vacuum that.
The roomba picks up pet hair better than my regular vacuum. I find that I need to empty it in the middle of a cycle sometimes. I don't have one of the timer/base station models. It has lasted for at least two years and I have 3 cats.
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I know that's the problem with Dyson for me to begin with.
$129 for a vacuum cleaner that will fill 1/3 of its cannister at high suction and the other 2/3 of its cannister at reduced suction.
vs
$529 for a vacumme cleaner that will have strong suction the entire way.
And I know it's only because of the way it is made - not because it is made of much more expensive parts (both are basically $10 of plastic, $10 of metal, and $10 of copper & misc stuff).
So the mindset that feels $500 is a reasonable price for a vacuum cleaner considers that $4800 is a reasonable price for a robotic one???? (vs $150 for a roomba).
Do roomba's currently empty their own bin yet? That's my issue. Small bin, and I wish it would go to it's charger, drop a little roomba pellet on the ground if it was full and then go get more.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Anyway, I'm not saying they don't break, as noted above, mine did. The battery also eventually died and I had to buy a new one (battery not roomba).
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
The thought of never having to manually vacuum again was enough to make us clean up and keep it clean.
Since this'll probably be the lone posting I make to this thread, I'd like to add that my cheap roomba Discovery SE does an absolutely amazing cleaning job, and keeps dust bunnies from happening under the bed and dressers (where it just barely fits). We clean it after every use and are amazed at how much it picked up. Just fantastic. I wish it could be a little better. It doesn't find it's way to it's "home" consistently, because we have one that cleans the whole upstairs - three bedrooms and a hall. But since it "lives" in the master bedroom, which is the largest, it's often there when it's running low. But what do you want for $150 (woot.com wootoff last November).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
My only problem with my Roomba is that it always ASSUMES that it's going in a straight line when it tries to go straight. If mine encounters a floor change with one wheel but not the other, it can deviate quite a lot and not know it - it must ruin the map.
Anyway, I still love the little fella, even after that time he tried to commit suicide by throwing himself down the stairs. What iRobot DON'T tell you, of course, is that you need a really good vacuum cleaner (I have a Miele) to CLEAN YOUR CLEANING ROBOT.
It should use the "trash" it picks up to generate it's own energy, thereby solving two problems at once.
Really, I have to agree with you, though. If you have a bagless system and just clean it more often, some of these really expensive vacuums are just not worth it.
The Roomba could use a larger bin - it works so well it's always full after running it, and we run it just about every day. It's really amazing. The first couple of days we had to empty the bin in the middle of the cycle.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
For that price you can hire a cleaner to come in once a week and vacuum... and straighten up and was the bathroom. And they can figure out how to vacuum around stuff pretty quickly.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I think the tone of the OP is awfully slick, e.g. "the UK company that reinvented the vacuum cleaner". Two beers say the anonymous submitter is a Dyson marketing consultant.
One thing that constantly amazes me in today's increasing tech world, is that people will still tolerate carpet in the slightest. It is like a magnet and trap for dirt and parasites and odor. A hardwood floor is so much more hygenic, hypoallergenic, and easy to clean. If you think hardwood floors are expensive or cold, there have been great advances in the past ten years. Laminate hardwood flooring is great looking, cheap, and easy to install (click together floating floors, with minimal cutting; anyone who can use a saw can pretty much install ones). If you like the look/feel of ceramic tile, you can get them to look like this, too. There are new cheap (and safety approved) in-floor heating options for use with laminate floors, as well, for a very cosy heating option. And an area rug over a hardwood floor provides added comfort, and an easier to clean/replace option.
Yes, laminate hardwood isn't quite as classy as real hardwood, but it's darn close, and it's cheap, easy to install, and tough as nails (well, tougher, really).
I see carpets as something that will seem dusgusting, ancient, and obselete within a few years. It's interesting to see technology to take care of them advancing, when there are so many better options.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I was largely unimpressed by a Roomba Scheduler I bought at Best Buy last year, so I took it back. I have a 1400 square foot house, and mainly I wanted it to take care of the main area (kitchen/living room). This thing would get down one of my hallways that is maybe 4 feet wide and 8 feet deep (leading to a bathroom and bedroom) and circle endlessly in that hall because it couldn't figure out how to get out.
It would also get stuck on a floor(tile or wood) to an area rug transition, it couldn't climb it but it could get down it.
Queue the "DO NOT WANT" broccoli dog.
And I've owned many other vacuums in the past as well. The Dyson is easier to empty, easier to manipulate (add extensions, use the hose, etc), and more reliable than any other vacuum I've ever used or owned. Honestly, I was pretty surprised at Consumer Report's mediocre ratings for the Dyson as well. I chalk it up to three things:
- They're nice to their vacuums. I suspect they don't try to vacuum up trash, paperclips, tacks, and other detritus. I've had my Dyson suck up things that stunned me... a normal bic lighter got sucked up without getting stuck. In fact, I've NEVER had anything stick inside yet, despite abusing it horribly. And if something did stick, the joins where they are likely to stick snap off easily.
- They don't test them for long. The only thing I've had to clean on my Dyson is the sweeper brush, about once or twice a year... long hairs get wrapped around it, and eventually it interferes with the belt that turns it. It's relatively easy to remove that rotating brush... MUCH easier than any other vacuum I've owned. The screws that hold it in are large so you can remove them with a coin, and there's only three parts... the plastic bottom, the brush itself, and the drive belt.
- They don't put a rating on how easy they are to empty. With the Dyson you just detach the container, hold it over the garbage... pull trigger... tap it to get the light dust out. Close it up. Compared to the dust, mess, and cost of bags and there is no comparison. Even compared with other bagless vacuums I've used, the Dyson is far easier to empty... many of them require you to lift and dump the container, or they don't seal well and let dust leak out. Other bagless vacuums often have filters you need to change for the light particulate dust.
Is Dyson perfect? Hardly. But I don't think the Consumer Reports tests are comprehensive enough to rate the things where Dyson is superior. I've had my Dyson for three years now, and I'm still quite satisfied.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
I have a roomba discovery and so far, in about a couple of months of use, it has not done that.
:)
So I rephrase my statement 'a firmware upgrade which will make it do so reliably'
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I once thought that my roomba did that. It's a discovery, and I definitely heard it dock itself and play the little tune. A while later, it was running again. I have come to the conclusion that my cats were playing around with it and pressed the right button to get it to run.
Just train your cat/dog to push the correct button when the charging light goes to green and you're all set!
how much for BAGS for the 129 vaccuum over it's operational life,
vs.
NOTHING FOR BAGS for the dyson.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random