Driss-A-Blog

The Roomba is pretty simple to use. First, you block off the exits to the room so it can't escape. It'll bounce off doors, walls, and furniture, and you can use virtual walls to keep it contained. Then you place the Roomba in the middle of the room, turn it on, and press the S, M, or L button appropriate to the size of your room. Then watch.

I had been hoping to bring the Roomba to work in the morning, but when I got up the battery wasn't done charging. So I went to work, looking forward to the end of the day when I could watch my new robot clean. After work, I carefully moved the chairs out of the room, blocked off the entrances with a lamp and two virtual walls, and let it go.

I was terribly disappointed. On one hand, I saw it vacuum up a penny. On the other hand, I saw it pass over a piece of dirt, drag it for two feet, and then let it fall out the back. I ran it for a second cycle, and that didn't help. Disappointed, I plugged it into the wall for recharging.

Saturday night I tried the Roomba in the breakfast room. It was much better, and did a thorough job of cleaning up. Ran it down the hallway—clean. Redid the first room, and it worked very well. I still haven't any idea why it failed the first time.

The Roomba does a very good job of cleaning. It automatically adjusts to clean anything from plain floors to short rugs (shag freaks it out). When vacuuming around the room, every so often it will run into a wall and then carefully edge it, catching dust close to the wall with its spinning edge brush and tossing it into the vacuum's path. By the time the Roomba is done, your floor is pretty clean. In fact, due to its three-inch height, the Roomba can clean beneath furniture that you wouldn't be able to. The only disadvantage is that it will leave vacuum tracks on your carpet that will make it look like you were drunk when cleaning. Just make up an appropriate story for your friends.

The Roomba isn't perfect, though. I have some area rugs about a half-inch high, and the Roomba has a problem catching the dirt that's right at the edge of where the floor meets the rug. It seems like the Roomba is adjusting to the rug height early, causing it to miss the dirt. I've not yet figured out a good way to deal with this.

Those who are familiar with rechargeable batteries of the NiCad and NiMH types know that there are two types of chargers: trickle chargers, which aren't very smart and slowly trickle electricity into the battery until it's full, and smart chargers which know exactly how much power it can put into the battery to charge it at full speed. The charger that comes with the Roomba is a trickle charger. From the time you plug the Roomba in, it takes 12 hours to charge the battery. For me, that's not too much of a problem, as my house really isn't that big. However, if you are considering heavier use of the Roomba, you will want the rapid charger. It's $60 (ouch).

The support is excellent. There is a Yahoo Groups group to which both owners and iRobot tech support people belong. I emailed the group with a question about how to perform a certain maintenance task on the Roomba, as the manual didn't seem to be very helpful. The next day I got a reply directly from the "Principal Designer / Director of Usability | Accessibility" at iRobot, explaining how to do it and sending a revised copy of the manual. There is also a website where the experimenters live. There you can see Roombas dissected and running augmented processors.

The Roomba is not without competition. Electrolux has a Trilobite, which, at first glance, seems fairly comparable to the Roomba. However, it uses magnetic strips to define areas, and actively scans the room and works out a cleaning plan rather than just bumping around (unlike the Roomba). It's also £1000 (≈$1600). Kärcher has the RoboCleaner 3000 which is very intelligent. It will automatically scrub heavily-soiled areas, and will find its way to its base when low on juice to recharge its batteries and empty its dustbin. It will run you AUS$3000 (≈$2000).

The competition reminds me of the Newton vs. Palm battle. The Roomba's competitors are—by far—more advanced. But if people don't mind setting up the Roomba in a room, blocking it off, and cleaning it when it's done, then that's circuitry that Roomba doesn't need, and cost it can avoid. $150 is at the impulse buy level. Its competitors are an order of magnitude more expensive. It doesn't matter how good they are. They're toast. And I have no doubt that the Roomba will eventually evolve to their level of intelligence.

I was finally able to make the Monday after I got the Roomba my bring-your-robot-to-work-day. I cleaned my cube, and attracted quite a crowd. I showed it off to some other coworkers, and generally destroyed productivity for a few hours. The next day, Peter had bought one.

Roomba strikes again.