Robot Vacuums

A couple of my friends have had them (Roombas). The novelty seemed to wear off quite quickly because I have seem them shoved in the cupboard under the stairs unused and according to one mate his one didn't last very long before it died either.

I think they are a bit cheese and butter, so think about your pie.
 
Better off spending money on a proper vacuum cleaner.

I can only see these being useful in a big house which is all open plan. Also, even so, these types of vacuums will still miss dust that isn't on the floor. So you still need a cleaner, or another vacuum or will have to dust everything by hand.

On a similar note, I knew some people who had a robot grass mower. It tended to crash all the time, so did nothing. Bizarrely though, it suddenly came to life and decided to start mowing in the middle of a lightning storm!
 
We have 10 Roombas in the lab we let student play with (usually evolving neural network controllers).
For cleaning a real house they kind of suck. S a toy that does a little cleaning, they are fun of over priced.
 
D.P. said:
We have 10 Roombas in the lab we let student play with (usually evolving neural network controllers).
For cleaning a real house they kind of suck. S a toy that does a little cleaning, they are fun of over priced.
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What model numbers?
All the reviews say although they take a long time the high level 500 series are very good at cleaning.
 
Don't know specifics (can check tomorrow), some a special models that programming ports.

There actually vacum power etc is fine, pretty standard I guess. The problem is they wont really vacum an area everywhere (the default behavior is some kind of random walk with enlarging logarithmic spirals). Given enough time they get to most places I supposes. The real issue is table legs, tight corners, chairs, cables.


We used to let them run free along the corridors but they often got lost and couldn't find their way back to the charger.

I would buy one if I had a large rooms without much furniture, but then I would reprogram them and add some new sensors.
 
I first bought a roomba for my mum about 2 years ago. She loves it - she has all wood floors and they roomba get's everything up, especially as it can get under all the couches and furniture. She rarely needs to get the hoover out.

I have one for my apartment. It's great; once every day or so I set it off when I leave to go to work and when I come back it has finished, recharged itself and is ready to go again. It's satisfying emptying the Roomba because you get to see the sheer amount of crap it picks up every day.
 
Cats tend to use them as vehicles to deliver a kicking. Apologies for the 4mb gif, hopefully no one is on 56k these days!

roombacath.gif
 
I read somewhere that a family with a dog had one, the dog poohed, the robot vacuumed, the pooh got liberally spread across the carpet - I wouldn't have been happy to come home to that.
 
I_M_Weasel said:
I read somewhere that a family with a dog had one, the dog poohed, the robot vacuumed, the pooh got liberally spread across the carpet - I wouldn't have been happy to come home to that.
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Curse you, you made me spray coffee all over my monitor there! :D

(I've been reading this line on these forums a lot these past few years but it's the first time it's actually happened to me!:p)
 
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