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Upgrades Toys

Roomba Robot Vacuum Gets Siblings 204

Posted by simoniker from the original-roomba-gets-jealous-and-sulks dept.
Victor Tramp writes "Apparently, the cute little robot vacuum by iRobot has siblings now! An article over at Forbes.com goes into some detail about the new Roomba models; featuring the Roomba Pro, which 'is an improvement on the original Roomba, including an intelligent navigation system..', and the Roomba Pro Elite, which is the '...new flagship model. It comes with a remote-control unit that lets you navigate the Roomba around the room, changing cleaning options as it goes.' I have one of the original Roombas, and it actually does a really good job!"
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Roomba Robot Vacuum Gets Siblings More

Roomba Robot Vacuum Gets Siblings

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  • Packs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @03:54AM (#6811900) Homepage
    Now it would be cool that if you had some of these roming free in an office building and they communicated about what they had done the you could just havea small pack of the robots constatnly cleaning

    Some sort of redundant bug system

    Rus

    • Re:Packs (Score:5, Funny)

      by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @07:21AM (#6812577)
      Good idea, but imagine getting off the elevator and seeing a swarm of these things just sitting there waiting for you under the control of Gene Simmons.

    • Several years ago I worked at the JC Penney corporate offices in Texas. At the time the building was new, and one of the cool gadgets they had were mail robots. They would load up the robots with mail, the robot would roll to the elevator, call the elevator, and then follow a special strip in the carpet of each floor, stopping every so often to deliver mail.

      Well, about a week into this people started complaining about the elevators being extremely slow, like a 5 minute or more wait. Turned out that the ma

  • Great but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by L-s-L69 ( 700599 )
    I still need one that can go up and down stairs, and clean behind my servers on the floor.

  • This robot... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28, 2003 @03:54AM (#6811903)
    ...really sucks!! :)

  • Dammit (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ahh shit the vacuum got the cat again.

    • Re:Dammit (Score:1, Funny)

      by hashwolf ( 520572 )
      That's what I call an intelligent vacuum cleaner!

      Not only it cleans, but it makes sure the floor stay cleaner, longer.

  • Outfits for the roomba? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 28, 2003 @03:56AM (#6811908)
    The Roomba may do a good job cleaning, but I'm sure it doesn't look very good in a little french maid outfit....um..unless you have a robot fetish or something, I guess.
  • As in: A) pigsty clean B) litttered C) neat D) dustfree

  • obligatory joke (Score:4, Funny)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:05AM (#6811941) Journal
    If Microsoft made a vacuum cleaner, it'd be their only product which would not suck...
  • I'm interested in a Roomba, but it's still a bit pricey I think, and I'm not sure how well it would work on a short carpet. Buying it would be a no-brainer for a hardwood floor or other flat flooring.

    Maybe I'll pick up a used one on Ebay or something to play with and see how it works.

    N.

    • Seems cheaper than we think (Score:5, Interesting)

      by neglige ( 641101 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:15AM (#6811966)
      [...] but it's still a bit pricey [...]

      I thought so, too - at first. But the article mentions that the Pro Elite (the 'flagship', other models might be even cheaper) will sell at $250. And that is - to my mind - an acceptable price. A good vacuum cleaner won't be much cheaper.

      I really have to start thinking about getting one. Earlier models sold for several hundred or even thousand dollar. A test would be nice though, because my robo would have to deal with 2 cats (bonus points for hovering up to the sofa and cleaning all the hairs off it)...

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)

      by nonmaskable ( 452595 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:16AM (#6811968)
      It works great on the medium thickness carpet (as well as the wood and tile) in my home. Cleaning carpet seems to hit the battery harder than cleaning wood, so you can pretty much only get one large and one small room on a charge.

      On any surface, it doesn't replace a once every few months hand cleaning with a regular vacuum, but for a once or twice a week cleaning, it really does work.

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:2, Informative)

      by ramk13 ( 570633 )
      You can head to a Sharper Image store if there's one nearby you and ask for a demo. I went with my cousin when he got one for my uncle. It works well for maintenance cleaning.

    • Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      The problem is that on a hard floor nothing beats a broom and one of the new variety of "sticky" mops. They also have the advanage of being cheap, nonelectric and lasting for as long as you do.

      For carpet I've found nothing that beats a good set of Oreck products. You really need line power to do a good job here. Orecks are a bit on the expensive side compared to a Hoover or Eureka, but damned cheap compared to a Kirby or Electrolux ( you can get an Oreck upright, handheld AND steamer for the price of one K
      • For someone like me it would be a godsend. We have three cats. To keep the house relatively hair free we need to vacum just about daily. If we had this thing, we could probably just do the couches and stairs once a week and do one big cleaning of the whole house on weekends.
        • I understand the issue. I once shared my home with 15 cats, the odd rabbit or two and other various smaller forms of furball.

          Someone once asked my mother, "What do you do about all the cat hair?"

          To which she replied, "Do with it? I walk on it, breath it, sleep in it and eat it."

          I'm unconvinced that the Roomba is up to this sort of thing. Even with just one cat and one oriental rug frequent teardowns of my upright are required to keep it from smothering in the stuff. The fact that I wear my own hair long

        • Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)

          by jfinke ( 68409 )
          I too have 3 cats. I bought a roomba. It couldn't keep up. I spent more time cleaning the roomba then I would have vacuuming by hand.

          I bought at Dyson Animal the other month. It is pretty amazing. It is actually disgusting how much crap it picks up. I got it for $450 from amazon (they were having a Friday special). It also has a little attachment for pet hair. It works pretty well.

      • dude, in my place we vacuum twice a year tops.

        not because we're poor, just because we're lazy and busy.

        this could be a big help.


  • - It can lurk in the dark corners at night and photograph burglars using its infrared lights.

    - It can monitor the light levels and tell the lights to brighten or dim accordingly.

    - I can surf to it (of course it has wifi and an IP address) and if we get two of them, we can play "robowars" in the hallway.

    - The camera can rotate upwards and ... uh-oh, the boss is here, gotta get back to work.

    "Just cleaning the floor, boss!"

  • does it go to the recharger when low on juice? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kaltkalt ( 620110 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:06AM (#6811949)
    if it doesn't automatically move over to the re-charging unit when it's running low on power, self-recharge, and then automatically start cleaning again when fully charged, it's worthless IMO.

  • Hopefully (Score:3, Funny)

    by kinnell ( 607819 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:10AM (#6811959)
    Hopefully the Super Roomba Pro Elite 300 Deluxe will have suckers on its wheels, so it can also climb up walls and suck the bugs of my ceiling. Otherwise, I'll stick with a regular vacuum cleaner.

  • Siblings... (Score:3, Funny)

    by watzinaneihm ( 627119 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:18AM (#6811975) Journal
    Apparently, the cute little robot vacuum by iRobot has siblings now!
    I knew these things were intelligent and all, but procreating robots!!!
    Cute, my foot!! Anyone knows how to neuter them thingies ?
  • Didnt anyone learn anything by watching The Animatrix DVD Part 1 and 2.

  • I told a friend (Score:5, Funny)

    by cra ( 172225 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:27AM (#6812000) Homepage
    . . . about this robot, and since he is single, he said that this would be the perfect product for any single guy. Until he found out that it is powered on only 30 wats. Then he found out that it probably don't suck that well. :-)

  • I for one... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Channard ( 693317 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:30AM (#6812011) Journal
    .. am creeped out by the idea of sentient cleaner robots running around, ever since I saw the 'Paradise Towers' episode of Dr Who where the robots took to cleaning up humans. It's a short step from cleaner robots to plasma gun toting Terminators. Honest (adjusts tin foil hat)

  • Dyson DC06 Robot? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by EddWo ( 180780 ) <eddwo@@@hotpop...com> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:33AM (#6812019)
    Whatever happened to the Dyson DC06? [dyson.co.uk] That was the first robot vacuum I've seen presented and it seemed to have the most intelligence. They don't seem to have sold very many though. Maybe the price put people off.

  • DIY roomba (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MoobY ( 207480 ) <`anthony' `at' `liekens.net'> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:43AM (#6812047) Homepage
    I'm currently working on a project to mount my handheld vacuum cleaner on top of a robot made with my Lego Mindstorms set. You can program the bot yourself, add some extra intelligence. I'm pretty sure I'll have a robot vacuuming my floors pretty soon, without having to spend the $200 on it. And as an extra, it's great fun building and programming one!

    • Re:DIY roomba (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ramk13 ( 570633 )
      Not to knock the project, which sounds super cool, but doesn't the cost of a mindstorms set + a handheld vacuum easily approach $150-200? Maybe if you can get a smaller mindstorms set, or if you already have one, it would make sense.

    • Re:DIY roomba (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bpb213 ( 561569 )
      Of course, doing it yourself is very fun, and possible to stay under $200 by avoiding legos.
      Just look here for a competition for this type of stuff:
      http://www.botlanta.org/rally2003/vac_phot os.html
    • For all those computing the price of my new robot vacuum cleaner, I already have a handheld vacuum cleaner and a lego mindstorms set, so it doesn't cost me anything extra to build one. Also note that a robot vacuum cleaner is not the only thing one can do with a set of lego mindstorms.
    • ...and call it the "Cannibal" for whenever it sucks up all the Legos you carelessly left on the floor.

  • A mature product already exists (Score:5, Informative)

    by CoderByBirth ( 585951 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @04:45AM (#6812055)
    The Swedish house appliance manufacturer Electrolux [electrolux.com] has a model called Trilobite which has been around for a couple of years.

    I haven't seen this sucker in action, but if memory serves me correctly it should be able to move around your home on flat surfaces, avoid obstacles and return to the power station.
    • Nice use of Flash here.
      http://trilobite.electrolux.co.uk/

      They say it can recharge itself automatically.
      It must build an internal map remember how far it moved to return to recharging station.
      • It's quite advanced. It builds a map, but isn't tied to it. For navigation, it has a sonar which crackles in a wickedly robotic way, when it tries to find the power station.

        If you accidentally nudge it, when its loading, it will bleep in a slightly annoyed tone and replace its, umm, hindside on the connectors.

        So it actually has a bit of personality and really feels like a semi-sentient robotic pal.

        J

    • There is one on display at one of the stores here in Graz, I don't remember exactly how much, but I think it was over 700 Euros.
      Which is much more than roomba.

    • Re:A mature product already exists (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I have one and it works very well!

      It's a bit more expensive, but looks much better and
      finds the chargestation automatically when needed.

  • If only.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sunnan ( 466558 ) <sunnan@handgranat.org> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @05:28AM (#6812156) Homepage Journal
    ...I could manage to keep our floor uncluttered enough for these to be useful. (In which case I wouldn't need them because it wouldn't be too hard to do it myself.)
    • Ya, that was my other concern :P

      I just picture it swinging by the computer in the livingroom and getting all caught up in the cabling and such :|

      N.
    • We got a Roomba last December, and it took a little while to get our 1st floor completely "roomba-ready". All the kid's toys get thrown in baskets, I pick up a tassled rug and throw it over a radiator, and I use a virtual wall unit to block a threshold that the Roomba *always* gets stuck on (even though it's below the advertised limit). Now, after dinner, we get our entire 1st floor roomba-ready (pick up toys, move chairs, etc.), and all go upstairs for the kid's baths + stories + bedtime. By the time th
      • I'm guessing I'm not the only /.'er who finds this idea of cleaning the house *EVERY NIGHT* a teensy bit, shall we say, excessive? or perhaps disturbing?

        I *think* the floors of my place were cleaned some time in 2002 when a flatmate's mother stayed for a week (it felt like a month).

        what i'm after is a dev ice i can set free once every week and will do a better job than no cleaning at all.
        • The guy has two small kids.

          I would guess the place would probably be a royal mess if he only cleaned once a week. If he cleans everyday, then he can spend less time on the weekly cleaning.

          Plus, the daily cleaning thing is probably his wife's idea. As a generalization, women tend to like things a bit neater than your average slashdotter.

  • Durability of Roomba? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Channard ( 693317 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @05:36AM (#6812170) Journal
    One thing occurs to me regards the Roomba - just how well does it stand up to kids? It sounds like a great invention but knowing how much stress kids can put on pieces of equipment. Especially equipment that might attract their attention by moving around of its own accord? Clearly it can't be expected to withstand Little Billy pushing it downstairs just to see what would happen, but can the Roomba's withstand bumps and knocks?

    • Re:Durability of Roomba? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sparr0 ( 451780 ) <sparr0@gmail.com> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @06:35AM (#6812333) Homepage Journal
      After intentionally disabling the ledge sensors in mine and having it take a tumble down a flight of stairs I can tell you that this is one of the most durable mobile appliances in my house, easily tougher than my normal vacuum cleaner.
    • I have kids and it hasn't been a problem. The Roomba just vacuums them right up along with all the other stuff.

  • The Karcher RoboCleaner is much better (Score:5, Informative)

    by markus_baertschi ( 259069 ) <markus&markus,org> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @06:03AM (#6812240)

    I prefer the Karcher RoboCleaner for one important reason:

    It requires almost no manual intervention

    You just tell it how often it should go out and clean and once in a while you empty the dirt in the base station. No other interventions are necessary.

    Il empties its dirt container itself and recharges itself automatically et the base station.

    Details here [robocleaner.de]

    Markus

  • Bah! (Score:2)

    by MoeMoe ( 659154 )
    Who needs a Roomba, the RoboSweep is all I need to keep my place clean... Now why are there squirrels rummaging in my clothing pile?

  • Sucks for me... (Score:3, Informative)

    by CheapScott ( 83584 ) <e1-v8r0-qj13-8193@emailias.com> on Thursday August 28, 2003 @06:25AM (#6812282)
    ...but in a good way!

    I bought a Rooma a couple of weeks ago after the last article that mentioned about the cheap (money-wise and quality-wise) competitor. We have two cats, two dogs, and hardwood floors. We "set it free" each morning as we go out to work. We didn't do it yesterday, and I noticed it as I was lying on the floor...sand and hair. It really does a good job for us.

    As far as having the ability to go back and recharge itself when it's done...yeah, it'd be nice, but it works fine for us how it is. Otherwise, we (i.e. my wife) would have to be dragging out the regular vaccuum every day. It does great in terms of just maintaining a sane level of cleanliness.

    I can see a future of fleets of these things roaming a hotel cleaning all of the rooms. Sort of reminds me of the robots from Minority Report.
    • With my schedule I set it free when I get home. It hasn't finished charging when I leave for work in the morning.

      The only problem I have had is that with two dogs the dog hair tends to get wrapped around the brush and roller, and not get tossed into the refuse bin. Either every recharge, or at worst every other recharge I have to take about 10 or 20 min and clean them up.

      It does help in another way as well. Because I Know that it needs a relatively clean space to work, I have done a better job of getting

  • Roomba vs Aibo? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nai ( 465491 )
    Next match on battlebots [battlebots.com]! A $200 vacuum versus a $2000 dog? Let's place your bet!

  • It's time for a Robotics category (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Onnimikki ( 63071 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @07:12AM (#6812534) Homepage

    With so many robotics stories lately (Japan's Proposed 30-Year Robot Program [slashdot.org], Robots for Air Force Protection [slashdot.org], Swimming Cockroach Robot Developed [slashdot.org], etc.), it's time that Slashdot made up a new category as opposed to filing them under "Upgrades [slashdot.org]".

  • I'm used to my computers going obsolete while still in transit from the seller, but my vacuum cleaner??? I just bought a "standard" model Roomba last week!

    Dammit.

  • Didn't like my Roomba (Score:5, Informative)

    by Laur ( 673497 ) on Thursday August 28, 2003 @07:56AM (#6812861)
    I bought a Roomba as soon as it came out and ended up returning it within a week. My experiences were thus:

    1. It sucked at sucking. It would roll over the same piece of fuzz on the carpet several times and still not pick it up. It just plain didn't work too well. At best it could be a supplement to a regular vacuum, but I didn't think it was worth it.

    2. It wasn't much quieter then a regular vacuum. You couldn't really do much while it was working, such as watch TV in the next room. You couldn't ignore it, it was just too loud. This might be okay for people who leave the house often and run it then, but if you're home and just don't like to vacuum this isn't gaining you much.

    3. The heuristics didn't work to well. Maybe they worked great in the lab with a perfectly square room, but when it needs to work in the real world and go around furniture it seems to fail miserably. It would go over the same patch of floor 5 or 6 times, yet never go over the patch 5 feet away within the time allowed.

    4. It couldn't transition from tile to carpet as advertised. It tried to go over at an angle, got stuck with one wheel on, one off, and proceeded to start rubbing a black rubber mark in my carpet (yes, the carpet/tile transition height was within advertised limits).

    I know other people have these and love them, but these are my experiences (YMMV). I found that manually vacuuming and sweeping took much less time and did a much better job. Further, the Roomba can't replace manually sweeping and vacuuming, it can only supplement it, and IMHO the price is too high for that.

    I certainly wish iRobot the best of luck with the Roomba, since success with this early model will lead to continuously improved products. I am certainly not against robotic appliances, I also have a Robomower [friendlyrobotics.com] and love it. It has many advantages over a manual mower and no drawbacks (except a bit higher price tag, but the benefits far outweigh this IMHO). It's very quit (I can run it at night), nearly maintenance free (it mulches while it cuts, no bag to empty, no engine to maintain), and completely replaces a standard mower. I long for the day when we have more products like this, but I just didn't think the first gen Roomba was it.

    • Interesting... I wonder if there was something wrong with your unit. We've had ours for about 2 weeks and it works great, picking up fuzz and even our dog's hair and leaving clean carpets and hardwood floors. Also, we've run it in an odd shaped hallway as well as in a living room and dining room full of furniture and it did hit everything, you just need to let it run until it tells you it's finished.

      I will agree that the transitions are a bit rocky going from one surface to another. The solution is to use


    • I had the same problems. It sometimes treated a floor to carpet edge as a wall. It couldn't deal with complicated geometries created by furniture. It didn't pick up anything bigger than a speck.

      If your home already looks like Martha Stewarts - clean, neat, organized - you might want a Roomba. If it doesn't, you'll have to move the furniture and stuff until it does, at which point running the vaccum yourself will take only a few moments and do a better job.

      This is a product for people whose perfect hou

  • With Roomba you can always go into another room, or leave the house entirely for complete quiet while Roomba cleans. (Web FAQ) [roombavac.com] (Emphasis Mine)

    This is good general advice you can use to handle any noisy problem in the home (spouse, dog, etc.), not just the Roomba.

  • "Apparently, the cute little robot vacuum by iRobot has siblings now!

    I got the RoboSweep [slashdot.org], which is kind of like the retarded cousin [roombacommunity.com] that your family doesn't talk about.

  • I recall reading a story about this sort of thing just last May... but the site where I read about said that Electrolux was selling them in Britain for a thousand British pounds.

    Now I'm seeing an improved version, one that's smart enough *NOT* to tumble down the stairs without having to set up magnetic tape boundaries on the floor, for only $250 US???

    I know that technology prices can fall, but this sort of price drop in that short a time is beyond credibility. My "if it sounds too good to be true then

  • Ok, well maybe thats not true, but I do have an important question to ask those that own one of these Robo Vacs (whatever they're called) How well do they get along with cats? I currently have a little 1 floor condo that I think this would work well on, but I wouldn't want my cat to get eaten by it well I was away. As well as I wouldn't want my cat to kill $250 worth of gears on my carpet. Any ideas, comments, true stories?

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