Roomba Competitor Slightly Lacking

tivojafa writes "Following hot on the heels of the Roomba vacuum cleaner, TV Products (USA) Inc have released the "RoboSweep" - "The intelligent sweeper that sweeps while you rest!". Roomba by iRobot is an engineering masterpiece with 15 sensors and 5 motors to navigate and clean the floors. It has been stripped apart and there are rumors of a replacement processor so it can be used as a general purpose robot platform. Now the RoboSweep "intelligent" sweeper has redefined intelligence (or lack of it) - the internals have got to be seen to be believed." Very funny.

When I was a kid...

[djkitsch]

About 15 years ago you could get "robots" that were EXACTLY the same as this - all they've done is stuck a few bits of Velcro on the bottom! Great injection moulded case too - very faux-sophisticated.

I think my childhood toy cost about $10...

Mirror

[jonman_d]

The site was incredibly slow with no comments, so I figured I'd mirror it for a day here [nemilar.net].

Please be nice to it :P

Re:Mirror

[RobertB-DC]

Well, if yours goes down, I just copied it to a Tripod mirror [tripod.com]. I won't take it down until who knows when... hopefully, it won't make anyone mad. Cheers!

Re:Mirror

[cethiesus]

A second [crcole.com].

Be nice as well.

mirror

[Crazy Man on Fire]

http://suspended.net/robosweep/robosweep.html [suspended.net] One of the images is missing, but better than nothing...

Re:As Seen On TV

[Lord Dimwit Flathead]

It's a chain. There's also a website [asseenontv.com], but it's unclear whether they're the same company. And yes, they carry the RoboSweep [asseenontv.com].

Re:We have a Roomba, and it's very dumb

[FeloniousPunk]

I've had my Roomba for several months now and have to completely disagree with this.
It's extremely useful, and does a fine job of cleaning the floors. It's not as strong as a big upright (which stands to reason, given that it is considerably smaller), but it makes up for the power differential with repetition. When Roomba finishes a room, it's as clean as it would be if I had done it myself. It takes longer, but of course I don't have to expend any effort, which seems a good trade off to me.
Roomba can get stuck like in a lobster trap, but a minimum of effort makes a room Roomba-friendly. Mine doesn't get stuck in the chair legs, but maybe my chairs are bigger than yours. A lot of my furniture has high enough clearance for the robot to get under to clean. Cables are a problem but this is no different from a normal vacuum cleaner.
The only major limitation I see is the battery. It holds about enough charge to do 2 small/ medium size rooms or one large room. Recharging takes about 12 hours. At first this bugged me, because I expected to vacuum the house in one go. But I ended up just shifting tactics; I do a couple of rooms in a night, then the others the next night. Turns out, the floors are a lot cleaner now doing a few Roomba jobs a week than vacuuming the whole house at a time once or twice a month.

Re:Has anyone actually used a roomba?

[IANAAC]

I have two cats that were initially pretty freaked out by the roomba. But that's because they couldn't really anticipate what it was doing/going to do. My regular vacuum cleaner is MUCH louder, so whenever I turned that on they'd run under the bed. The roomba is quiet enough that it gets their attention, but doesn't really scare them much (unless they lose focus on where it's going and it ends up running into one of them. I've seen a couple of spectacular flips because of this :-) Now that they're pretty much used ot it, they start by following it around, then lose interest and go about their business. Overall it's been pretty good. My place is mostly hardwood floors, with tile in the kitchen and a fairly thick rug in the living room. It has trouble with the think pile of the living room rug, but handles everything else beautifully.

Re:High Tech Design

[stuffman64]

Heh, and how about that artificial intelligence claimed in its ads. Heck, this [matchtheprices.com] site even goes out of the way to say that in bold letters.

These guys should be sued for misleading advertising. Do a search for "robosweep" on Google (or just click here [google.com]) Isn't it funny how all of the sites use the same exact wording? Who exactly runs this whole "As Seen on TV" thing anyways? Caveat Emptor!

love my roomba

[cacheMan]

My Dad's sarcastic reaction was, "I can't believe we made it this far without a robot vacume cleaner". I understand where he is coming from, but I don't have a cleaning person come to my house.

My wife and I both work and my dog sheds, this leaves both very little time for the vacuming and a very large need for vacuming. We struggled with the $200 purchase for about 6 months, but have not regretted it for 1 second since laying down the money. (Check techbargains.com, you can find it for $160 delievered).

The roomba is right for us because we always found the vacume to be a chore. If you don't feel the same way, you probably don't need a roomba. As far as performance goes, every time the thing runs it fills it's little bin. The amount of dust that it picks up is remarkable. It can easily go under our bed, when was the last time you vacumed under the bed? I totally agree with one review I found that said the fact that you have to empty the little bin is (accidental?) marketing genius. Every time we use it we are encouraged to use it again, and soon!

It doesn't do stairs, doesn't handle the corners of some throw rugs well, and doesn't handle shag at all. We have to pick up the clothes/objects/garbage before using it (the horror). I really haven't found much to be upset about.

I put it in the iPod, VW Beetle, iMac, and Tivo category. It does something well, it's not perfect, but it's really cool. I didn't think I'd ever feel this way about a vacume.