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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?"
It's called the DC06. This link is as good as any.
That's where the Roomba comes in handy. It does an excellent job of dealing with cat hair on carpet, about as well as my Miele manual vacuum. I set it off twice a week to keep the place looking tidy. I do have the "advantage" of living in a smallish 3 room apartment so a single Roomba does me fine.
The cats don't mind the Roomba too much. One of them will just move to another room. The other will stay in the room, studiously ignoring the Roomba until it crosses her path, then she'll step out of the way giving the poor Roomba an annoyed, disdainful look.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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
If you look around, you'll notice that Henry cleaners are used by professionals in places like offices and hotels. The ones you buy in the retail shop are basically industrial-quality cleaners with an amusing face and will stand a considerable amount of abuse.
Dysons are designed to look pretty, and are heavily advertised. They are then built cheaply in the Far East. Suprisingly, they are a lot more expensive than the sturdier professional machines: I suppose a lot of money goes into advertising (or into Dyson's pocket).
-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.
If you had read the blog entry (and the update) the GP linked to, you would've noticed that noone ever said that the Dyson hoovers were bad - quite the opposite. They apparently all received "very good" ratings; what the GP was trying to point out is that
a) The Dysons are not an order of magnitude better, as it often seems to be claimed;
b) In fact, in all tests, there were a number of other hoovers that were *better*;
c) In fact, those other hoovers were also *cheaper*.
So, no, a Dyson certainly isn't bad, but you can get an even better product for a lower price if you buy from another manufacturer, as long as you care about performance than about novel looks.
butter the donkey