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Floor Vacuum Robot for $200
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Fri Oct 18, 2002 12:36 PM
from the to-lazy-to-stand dept.
from the to-lazy-to-stand dept.
abhikhurana writes "MSNBC is running a review of Roomba,
supposedly the first intelligent 'floor vac', as in a cross between vacuum
cleaner and a robot. I think its especially suited for lazy bums like me. Just
let it loose, sitback and enjoy. There is also a video of how it cleans the
floors, which requires windows media player (what else?) to watch it. It seems
that the robo cleaner can indeed do that job for which it has been designed. A
related article on
Techreview has slightly more details
about how it works. There is also a website exclusively for
Roomba."
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Floor Vacuum Robot for $200
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Except the batteries don't last long enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's go back in time to the 1980's.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember? Robots were going to do EVERYTHING in the 70's and 80's.
They were going to help us! Everything was robot this, robot that.
Bring us drinks, cut the lawn (solar power!), vaccuum....
I'm going to go read all my back issues of Popular Science, I'll find a robot lawn mower or two.
...And space comedy movies! (Score:4, Funny)
"She's gone from suck...to blow!"
Flat Earth Myth (Score:4, Insightful)
This story was invented by Washington Irving (yes the writer of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories) to show his contempt for the priesthood and for the conservative nature of the church and European nations. And guess what? It caught on and expanded to include everyone that lived before them.
Lets all ignore the fact that every time there was an eclipse that the shadow was round or that sailors from around the world would loose site of land as they sailed or that a Greek mathematician calculated the circumference of the earth and was only 52 miles off.
Jeffrey [ucsb.edu]
Burton Russell
Has a very short piece but he says it best with
"A round earth appears at least as early as the sixth century BC with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere. Although there were a few dissenters--Leukippos and Demokritos for example--by the time of Eratosthenes (3 c. BC), followed by Crates(2 c. BC), Strabo (3 c. BC), and Ptolemy (first c. AD), the sphericity of the earth was accepted by all educated Greeks and Romans."
Vacuum? (Score:4, Funny)
meoooooow! (Score:5, Funny)
Fluffy? Where are you Fluffy?
Why is it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is it... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about you but if that thing started running in my house at 3 AM it would end up out the window.
Re:Why is it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why is it... (Score:5, Informative)
Runaway (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe I'll get one of these things so I can... (Score:5, Funny)
Heh.. (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, dumb joke, but it beats the inevitable "That robot sucks!" jokes.
Goal (Score:4, Funny)
hopefully the researchers will figure out.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hopefully the researchers will figure out.... (Score:4, Funny)
Because the research was based on a Slashdot poll! I mean have you seen Cowboy Neal?
What about the corners? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wonder how the cats are going to react to this? (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like a lot of fun for when the cats misbehave, though.
"Here kitty kitty kitty..."
Have one! Works great! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Have one! Works great! (Score:5, Interesting)
If, however, he bought it a couple years ago I might buy a hundred hours saved.
Looked at one of the robotic mowers a few months ago, but they only work well if you have a single contiguous area of lawn, with no narrow sections. I have three separate lawn areas, which would require buying two additional power stations and manually moving the robomower between each section. No thanks.
The Fools! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't they realize the danger?
According to Professor Frink:
Elementary chaos theory tells us that all robots will eventually turn against their masters and run amok, in an orgy of blood and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
Re:The Fools! (Score:5, Funny)
Professor Frink: "According to my calculations, the robots will not turn on us for at least 72 hours."
[Robot sits up on the table and starts to choke a scientist.]
Professor Frink: "Oh, forgot to carry the Y."
Family Test - LEGOS! (Score:5, Insightful)
Legos, flash cards, marbles, mcdonalds toys, stuffed animals with fluffy parts, video games and controllers, dirty clothes.
Now give me a robot that washs and folds clothes, and picks up kids toys, and I can use a Roomba. (And no Honey, you are not a Robot.)
That's bullshit.. (Score:5, Funny)
$200 ?!
I paid $6,000 (US) for my RealDoll and it can't move at all, let alone vacuum the floor.
Re:That's bullshit.. (Score:5, Funny)
$200 ?!
I paid $6,000 (US) for my RealDoll and it can't move at all, let alone vacuum the floor.
But have you tried fucking the vacuum?
Pre-Vacuum Pick-up (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife does a lot of sewing. How well can Roomba handle lots of thread on the floor? How about pins?
The problem isn't the vacuuming. It's the picking up that you have to do before you can vacuum.
Step one (Score:5, Funny)
I read a review of the roomba (Score:5, Informative)
in a local paper [newsday.com]. It said that the Roomba couldn't completely replace your standard vacumm. It doesn't do stairs, and it has no attachments for things like furniture upholstery, etc. The article basically said it was good if you lived in a small place such as an apartment or didn't have kids, but if you need to do heavy duty cleaning, the 'bot wasn't gonna repalce your standard vac.
Nit-pick (Score:3, Funny)
And, apparently, from the too-lazy-to-spell department, too...
Pervert! (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmm
Floor VAX? (Score:5, Funny)
It's too slow (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's too slow (Score:5, Funny)
silly manufacturer
:P
Real man's challenge (Score:5, Funny)
Geeks now have a vacuum cleaner web server!
First one to run apache/linux on it wins.
Another Vacuum story? (Score:5, Funny)
(doan hit me ;)
This is Rodney Brooks' company. (Score:5, Informative)
For those robot geeks among us who did NOT know, this is Rodney Brooks' company.
Rodney A. Brooks is Director of the 230 person MIT [mit.edu] Artificial Intelligence Laboratory [slashdot.org], and is the Fujitsu Professor of Computer Science. He is also Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of iRobot Corp (Roomba) [irobot.com]
He received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1981.
This guy is to robot-geeks what RMS is to Open-Source.
Vacuuming is the easy part! (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd love a robotic lawn mower, but don't think it would work very well on our lawn; we have significant amounts of landscaping, the ground is fairly bumpy (enough to make me sore after riding the lawn mower for a while), there are hills, buildings, dog toys, flowers, all kinds of stuff that need to be avoided. Do the lawn mowers only work if you have a flat, unadorned lawn?
Improvements. (Score:4, Interesting)
Also on my wishlist:
1. Return-to-base self-charging.
2. Return-to-base dust bin emtpying.
3. Environment learning. It could develop a map of the floor, and keep track of the dirt collected in different areas. Then it could do a daily cleaning of the high-traffic areas, and do occasional full passes.
4. Take some lessons from Robot Soccer [robocup.org] and learn some teamwork. (Imagine a beowulf cluster [acceleratedservers.com] of these!)
5. Remote Interface with an X10 burglar alarm. (Although "Release the vacuums!" just doesn't have the same ring as "release the hounds!)
--sg
Similar robot from ElectroLux (Score:4, Informative)
Trilobite is about 12000 DKK however, which is 1500 EUR.
Here's the Danish website [electrolux.dk] with Flash demonstration and some information in English [electrolux.se] too.
I have something like this. (Score:3, Funny)
more than one of them in a house??? (Score:3, Funny)
We have one of these at work (Score:3, Informative)
Seems to be ill-suited (Score:3, Interesting)
First of all, it seems to only floors. And it only cleans "slightly" it doesn't seem like it will go deep into the rug and get that dirt out, it does not seem powerful at all with no adaquate suction.
In addition, it doesn't seem very intelligent. It works by sweeping around an area, then when it detects something, it will go in a circular motion to make sure it gets all of it up in that area. But it can easily roam off and miss a lot. Well, unless you give it a lot of time. In the video, they said it would take 45 minutes to clean the studio. Or a half hour to clean a small room. Do note, half of that time is probably finding the mess. That's probably it's biggest problem. Perhaps it should send out detection lasers (or whatever, the stuff that stores use for automatic doors etc.) to detect if anything is above floor level?
The problem with actually finding the mess in a short amount of time was so paramount that they developed little pods that you put around it, to cage it in so it won't pass them and find the mess faster. While that helps, it really isn't solving the problem. Ideally, you'd start it up and it goes straight to the mess and clean it up.
Right now, I'd consider the thing blind. Aimlessly circling around looking for crumbs.
I wouldn't recommend it. Though, there is very good potential for "iRobot" (the company). Check back in a few years.
Just bought one... (Score:5, Informative)
It manuevers around and under everything that is over 6" high. So, it can deal with coffee tables, chairs, beds, etc. It detects stairs and avoids them. It comes with a virtual wall unit (you can buy more), that sends out a signal the roomba won't cross. When I first got it, I put it is my main room. It has a TV, a large L shaped couch, and 2 litter boxes. The room is 20x10. I eat in front of the tv, so you can imagine all that crap. I ran it in there, and I was amazed at all the stuff if picked up.
There are a few caveats, however.