The Roomba is the commercial name for the robotic vacuum cleaner made and sold by a company called iRobot. The first Roomba unit was released in 2002 with updates and new models released every year since then. As of January of this year (2008), over 2.5 million of these robots have been sold.
The Roomba runs on internal nickel-metal hydride batteries and must be recharged regularly from a wall plug, although the newer models have a self-charging homebase that they automatically return to when they start to become low on power. Charging on the homebase takes about three hours.
The Roomba is round and looks like a fat frisbee measuring, 13.4 inches (34 cm) in diameter and less than 3.5 inches (9 cm) high. A large contact-sensing bumper is mounted on the front half of the unit, and an infrared sensor is located at its top front center. Depending on the model, it may come with between one and three “Virtual Wall” infrared transmitter units. This is the video advertisement:
So far, there have been three generations of Roombas: The original Roomba, the Pro, and the Pro Elite; the second-generation “Discovery” series with a larger dustbin, dirt detection, and optional home base. The newest series of bots seem to come with more sophisticated features.
The Roomba DirtDog which is the least expensive and is targeted for the home in places where the debris would the most heavy: patios, decks, workshops, garages, basements and other industrial floor surfaces. This bot claims to have a high-speeder, counter-rotating brushes and an oversized debris bin clean up heavy-duty messes.
The Roomba 570 can now figure out the difference between carpet and floors and then adjust for the change in texture and height. This home service bot boasts features like the ability to schedule its cleanings and also to fully concentrate on one room before moving to another.
The priciest Roomba is the aptly-named Scooba, which uses water to wash floors as it moves around its home surroundings. It has its very own storage mat and actually preps, washes, scrubs and squeegees the floor. The company claims that it can handle hardwood, tile and linoluem flooring.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about the Roomba is its adoption by the robotics community as a base unit for experimentation. Even though the cuteness factor on the Roomba is closer to that of the industrial robot, people have demonstrated an affinity for it in a number of ways by modding it or dressing it up.
Filed under: robots for the home | Tagged: dirtdog, household robot, roomba, roomba 570, scooba, service robot, vacuum robot, vacuuming robot
