The Coming (Cleaning) Robot War | Hacker News Reader

The Coming (Cleaning) Robot War

popularmechanics.com

19 pointscubix20 comments

I do own a Roomba 560 with 2 virtual walls (as sold in France). It's easily the best home-related purchase we did last year.

For the anecdote, we nicknamed it "wall-e". Our 2yo is totally used to it.

I'd for sure would be willing to buy more domestic robots if I could find valuable ones (I'm thinking about the Scooba).

Is there anyone with interesting links to share on the subject ?

In terms of the Scooba's value, if you have good sized swaths of hardwood or tile that you can clear off for it, it becomes a practical alternative to most mop work. However, I wouldn't recommend it for the non-technical--I had to clear the pump opening a couple times by forcing water through it (per tech support). Still, I hate mopping, and it was decent enough at it.

In terms of practicality the Scooba is like the dishwasher-convenience paradigm. You maintain it, load and unload, but it saves you work overall. I get the sense that the return on effort is slightly lower than the Roomba.

After we had our first child, we started having a person come in and clean and although it isn't cheap, it is probably the change that has made the biggest improvement in our quality of life in a while.

IMHO mopping isn't really an issue - it is fairly fast. What is a drag is sweeping or vacuuming the room before you mop.

That is surely something that can be done by an ordinary roomba?

My Roomba seems to pick up an order of magnitude more dust than any Swiffer mop ever has. Brushes and a vacuum will do a better job cleaning than pushing around a wet rag in a very nice pattern any day.

I've done more repairs on my Roomba than any of my Swiffer mops. The gears on the Roomba brushes keep getting clogged with long strands of fiber. My Roomba model is pretty recent too -- only a year old.

Damn! I never had any issue with mine.

At first I thought there was one, except that I just forget to RTFM.

Sidenote: I think it's really important to clean the brushes on a regular basis to keep these littl' things running.

I guess we need a roomba companion robot to clean the roomba brushes. Who cleans the cleaner?

We are very close to having consumer robots drive a burst of innovation. We need the Apple II of robotics then we're off!

It wasn't only the Apple II we first need something like an Altair 8800 an oh, a Homebrew Computer (robotics?) club so we can have those 37 companies opened by its members.

The homebrew robotics club meets the last Wednesday of every month at NASA Ames in Mountain View. It's pretty interesting to drop in on.

http://www.hbrobotics.org/

Here's the URL for Mint: http://www.mintcleaner.com/

Looks like it'll do a great job of all the furniture-free rooms with perfect 90 degree corners I don't have!

It'll do a great job of making sure all the rooms you don't have are perfectly clean, no matter whether they have 90 degree angles or not!

I love my Roomba very much. She cleans every day when I'm out of the house so dust never gets a chance to accumulate on the floor. She cleans around furniture and she fits under my bed where I'd normally break my back trying to vacuum.

I've had to rescue her from an empty box I left lying around once and I have to empty her once a week but overall it's so much better than the old-fashioned way.

I'm still not sold on household robots yet.

Looking out from where I'm sitting, I see hardwood floors, throw rugs, carpeting, and lots of accumulated, moving household detritus brought in by the family. Shoes lying haphazardly. Afghans partially off the couch and touching the floor.

The point isn't that I have a messy house, but that it's really difficult to isolate one function, say swiffering, and make it work, because it's related to a bunch of other functions, like putting out the cat, or picking up the living room.

Perhaps it makes sense in a bigger, more empty house, filled by people who don't leave lots of things askew. Don't know.

I'm betting in 10-15 years we'll start seeing some multi-function household robots -- perhaps that can pickup and clean. Once they reach 3 or 4 related functions instead of just one, I can see them making more sense.

Having clear floors seems like a positive side effect :)

That being said that I don't have a roomba because I don't have clear floors.

I already see robots that have the mechanical agility and dexterity needed, In 3-4 years the average appliance robot will have a computing CPU comparable to today's desktop computer, and the price of that dexterity will be affordable. I doubt I'll be waiting 10 years to get a practical automatic cleaning device.

We still don't have flying cars in our driveways. Because of this fact, popularscience and popularmechanics are forever discredited.

I really want my flying car!

We won't have flying cars - we will have eco-friendly flying bikes!

I just had a nightmare of a flying critical mass. Self-righteous hipsters blocking the air-roads to make a point. That point will be, "Hey! We're assholes, look at us!"

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