I have a Roomba Discovery that I picked up a little over a year ago. Great little device, however it’s recently started having serious problems. I don’t know if it’s dead or not, so I thought I’d pick the brains of the SDMB and see what they have to say.
I have gone through this unit and cleaned it as thoroughly as I possibly can.
Now, here’s what little Destructor does…
I put it down and hit the clean button. It begins its opening spiral. After a few seconds of appearing to run normally it (apparently) decides that it’s stuck because it goes into reverse in a tight spiral and kicks one of its wheels up a few times. Then it will roll forward a second or two, and repeat the backwards spiral. It’ll repeat the process once more (usually) and then quit.
I’m sure he can be fixed. By you?.. probably not. I would look into a repair shop near your location.
I would be interested in a few behavioral tests as well. I would try starting him and then bumping him to get him out of the ‘spiral’ as quickly as possible. Does he continue on for the same amount of time before getting pseudostuck or does he convulse right away if not in the spiral? I would also get him going and then grab onto his sides and not let him move. Does he act like he’s stuck or does he just carry on like he thinks he moving along the ground
For some reason it sounds like the stasis sensor could be the problem (the sensor that detects whether he is moving or not).
As a first step, I would go to http://www.irobot.com/ and check out their Service/Support page. Looks like they have online Q&A, and can probably direct you to an authorized service center.
