I saw this robot last year... and wasn't impressed (Score 3)

I saw this robot demonstrated about a year ago at a "Robotics Expo" in Boston. (and was asked to fill out a little card indicating my income and at what price I would consider buying it. I said $50. I think they said they planned to sell it for a few hundred dollars, but I could be remembering wrong on that one)

The design may have changed since then, so this may no longer be correct, but the version I saw used only dead-reckoning (counting the revolutions of each wheel) to determine its position (and to some extent, whether it is stuck against an object), and had no other sensors (no bump sensor, no compass to sense direction, nothing to tell if it had tipped over or if the vacuum had become caught on the edge of a rug or a small pet, etc...)

I asked the guy who was demonstrating it what happened if there was a bump in the floor, it ran over something (would change "apparent distance" as well as possibly direction), your pet/kid/you bumped it and moved it, etc.

He sort of stammered and avoided the question.

Never mind the fact that you have to hook the vacuum up to it (and remove it, unless you want your vacuum sitting out in the corner of your living room), pre-load its tray with drinks, and recalibrate its destination points every time you move a piece of furniture.

Sigh.

p.s. again, these are only comments on a demo version I saw last year

p.p.s also at the robotics expo were Lego Mindstorms, some small solar robots, and NewtonLabs and their vision system (used on their winning robots in the Internation Micro Robot World Cup a few years back.