What’s so special about a Roomba?

Factual Questions
1

Our 572 arrived today. It’s downstairs going through the sixteen-hour initial charge. Can. Not. Wait. Kitchen is cordoned off with all clutter picked up. Have until nine, when the time is up. I’ve never been so enthused about vacuuming.

Is it only because they use the word ‘robot’ in their marketing materials? I get that it has hackable bells and whistles. I can build my own remote out of a Wii, so I can … wait, so I can what? Instead of playing a game on the Wii, I can stand in the parlour and move the Roomba around? Doesn’t that sound like, I don’t know, * not playing games and instead standing around vacuuming?* What evil genius thought that up?

Anyway, when I was a kid I had this marvellous toy. No, not the zip/bop/whirr gizmo, but close (what the hell was that thing called, anyway?). It was this awesome metal fire engine. It screamed its siren super loud and made fire truck clanging sounds as it drove itself around the linoleum. Not content to just make a cool sounds, whenever it hit a wall its wheels reversed, turned, and off it went in a different direction. I loved it, but come to think of it I bet that was one annoying fucking toy.

I also had a Commodore 64. Hell, I had a TRS-80 CoCo. 4K of memory in there; pissant from today’s perspective, but enough to write a handful of lines of code to keep track of simple math. Math like how many wheel rotations = how much distance or what direction something turned.

Without nostalgically waxing on about toys of yore, you can probably see where my question is.

What makes the Roomba so special? Is it just that no one had ever combined the idea of a simple moving robot with the right light-weight vacuum? Is it that they finally got the parts right and it both scoots about and manages to do a good job? I don’t mean to trivialize this accomplishment. The idea of combining light sensors to detect dirt and corners and stuffing a TRS-80 atop a Hoover—and getting it to work—is brilliant.

Or is the Roomba more sophisticated than that? Is the Roomba a great machine or is it a great robot? Please don’t make me define my terms. I think I’m primarily asking about the sophistication of its programming.

Oh, this is in GQ because I’m hoping some of you have seen (or read about) the code that it ships with, so there are factual answers out there.

2

It’s all about the price point for the technology involved. At the time, that level of functionality in a consumer product (that was cheap and actually worked!) was unheard of. The area-coverage algorithm – as simple as it is – was pretty nifty to have implemented.

More importantly from a whiz-bang standpoint is that the Roomba (and iRobot) was a direct outgrowth of Rodney Brooks’ research. Dr. Brooks popularized and was instrumental in establishing the paradigm of behavior-based robotics, particularly the subsumption architecture. He had a direct hand in radically changing the direction of AI robotics research.

3

What is the coverage algorithm (er, around here I guess it would be the algorhythm)? Does it actually learn the room as it goes? Does it get tired, go charge on the base for a while, then pick up where it left off?

4

Kittehs can ride it!

5

No, it takes in no data about the room. It’s pattern is – randomized is not the word – it’s designed to take in the entire room eventually by following its pattern. You will see, if you are new to Roomba, that Roomba sometimes vacuums the same area 10 times while ignoring another area.

6

I’m guessing what’s special about it is that it makes you keep your clutter picked up and your shoes in the damn closet :smiley:

7

Isn’t a big part of the draw the fact that it’s so small?

Moving toys and microprocessors are nothing new, but could you imagine a full size vacuum zooming around your house randomly? Bumping into things and being loud? Roombas are small and quiet, right?

8

If anybody reading this thread has a handy link to that time-lapse video of that LED-equipped Roomba doing its thing that went around the tubez a while back, I’d be much obliged if you shared it.

9

Aren’t you supposed to ask what good a product is, ***before ***you buy it?

10

This?

Oh, wait. Must read for comprehension :smack: That’s a still and you wanted a video. Durh…

11

I’ve been waiting for the technology to improve. I heard the early Roomba’s weren’t all that good.

I’ll have to check and see if Consumer Reports has tested the new ones.

12

I have a 530, and it does a much better job of the vacuuming than I did with my cheap Walmart canister vac - the little lint tank is always full, even if I sent it around a couple days after its last vacuum. With it the apartment is clean-clean, not bachelor-clean. I call it my pet trilobite.

13

As far as I can tell, the latest Consumer Reports review of vacuums that includes the Roomba is in the March 2006 issue. In that report, the iRobot Roomba Scheduler scored a 79, which was the same score achieved by the best-rated upright and better than that of the best-rated canister.

A score of 79 would have been top of the pack of the November 2010 review of uprights (74) and canisters (73). Whether a 2006 79 = a 2010 79, I do not know.

14

For details on the algorithm, see How Stuff Works. If you’ll allow me to expound, more on background than on the algorithm…which is actually pretty simple:

This is a great example of behavior based robotics. Speaking generally, up until Brooks (although there was earlier stuff, e.g., Braitenberg’s Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology), robotics and AI was generally of the Shakey variety. Tons of work done on planning, logic systems, etc. (e.g., Nils Nilsson and the STRIPS planner). Brooks’ work changed that; the Roomba was one of the first consumer robot products that displayed what appeared to be some level of “intelligence”. Now, as with much of AI, the good bits have become so ingrained as to be commonplace.

15

Well, maybe that particular area of the floor really appreciated being vacuumed, know what I mean?

16

This is all IMO but it’s great for light cleanings and great for getting under beds and other furniture that has a little ground clearance. It’s also entertaining.

17

We have a 532 - and a golden retriever who sheds a dog’s worth of hair everyday.
The wins are:

  • it is more methodical than I am. For me, one pass at an area and I’m done. It goes over and over.
  • It is good for under beds.
  • You can close the door on it, or put up a virtual wall, start it up, and forget it.
  • An odd advantage - since it doesn’t have a sealed bag, it never vacuums up anything to be gone forever. I found a AAA battery in its compartment once - I was impressed.

The floors are much cleaner since we got it.

18

DJ Roomba!

19

I went through three versions of the TRS-80 CoCo. Loved having them, too. And you could do a lot of amazing stuff with them, even with their tiny memories compared to today’s computers. My favorite program was a winner in a contest for one of the magazines devoted to the CoCo. The program was just one line and it was a fair enough word processor.

Well, yeah. Bachelor clean would be an apartment without a vacuum, wouldn’t it?