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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.
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.