Floor Vacuum Robot for $200 367
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."
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.
What about the corners? (Score:3, Interesting)
combine this with photovores and ... (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder .... (Score:2, Interesting)
Pretty low noise for what ? a vaccum cleaner ? cos even a low noise one is noisy as hell.
This looks like a ripoff of Husqvarna's automatic lawnmower. Only they have a 100% unattended one, as one model is solar powered !! http://www.automower.com/
Re: Really a Electrolux ripoff (Score:1, Interesting)
Vacuum-cleaner stores are selling much prettier versions of these puppies in Europe right now -- this version even has a LCD:
http://www.trilobite.electrolux.se/
Really begging for a slew of Beowulf Cluster jokes?
AK
That's better than a kid (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that I think abou it, the robot probably only vacuums area that it can physically move over, so after a couple months, Fibonaccinumbers come into play and you'll have a dust bunny population explosion. But that's about the same amount of area any kid will vacuum, except that kids will probably skip any areas that don't look dirty (even if they really are).
F-bacher
Re:Why is it... (Score:3, Interesting)
The First? (Score:2, Interesting)
Electrolux claims they were first! Trilobite Pressrelease [electrolux.se]
Except the batteries don't last long enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why is it... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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?
Still not a good vacumer (Score:1, Interesting)
What we need is a robot with a arm that have a good mobility to go under the couch, behind stuff. Otherwise....useless.
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
Isn't it typical... (Score:2, Interesting)
If vaccuming had been fun, it would have been l33t suXor or something...
Re:What if (Score:2, Interesting)
The technology they are using in the Trilobite to let it map out rooms is really cool: echo-location with ultrasound, just as bats do.
As far as I know, it's so far only being sold in Sweden (since spring 2002) and Norway (since autumn 2002). I've read that Electrolux plans to start marketing it for other European countries in early 2003.
The only down-side about this robo-cleaner is the price.. about 12000 kroner here in Norway, which is about USD $1500. (Ouch.)
I've been drooling over this thing since it was released on the Swedish market, but it's way too expensive for me yet. Hopefully competing products will force Electrolux to lower the price.
I really like mine. (Score:1, Interesting)
My one and only complaint is that it has no timer. I would think that it would have cost practically nothing to add functionality to allow it to automatically turn on and start on a programmed schedule, say every Wednesday at noon or something like that.
Re:What about stairs? (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why is it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Consider the small number of sensors on this thing. If I remember correctly it has just a few IR sensors (used for following walls, etc). Mapbuilding in general requires a little more than that, and is also VERY computationally and memory intensive (for more information you might want to read about the most common method for mapbuilding, evidence grids [cmu.edu]).
Even if you were just to attempt to remember a) the location of your docking station and b) your own location, after half an hour of vacuuming (especially on carpet) and bumping into things, the odometry error that will have accumulated is tremendous -- you'd have no hope of knowing your actual location relative to the docking station. Normally a number of localization methods are used to combat odometry error (most commonly, Kalman filtering [mcgill.ca]). However, they all require lots of sensory input and processing.
So, if you want a robot that can plug itself back in (at least, one that can do so by remembering where it's docking station is), be prepared to spend a lot more than $200.