I am mesmerized by our new robotic vacuum (2019) | Hacker News Reader

I am mesmerized by our new robotic vacuum (2019)

dev.to

293 pointsmzehrer179 comments

I bought a robotic vacuum more out of curiosity and to see if I should buy one as a gift for my parents. Just one of the cheapest models that still had good reviews.

It turned out that all deficiencies of such a vacuum are offset by its basic function: it keeps the apartment clean each day, every day. Dirty corners? Weak suction? Small container? Somewhat noisy? Not too smart? Gets stuck sometimes? I need to clean hairs out of the rotating brush? I still have to mop the place? Pffft, none of this matters when the carpet and the kitchen are dust-free every day without me doing the vacuuming. If it misses a spot today, it will get it tomorrow. After a few runs the floor is indeed cleaner than it ever was, and stays that way. No rogue crumbs stuck to my feet before the cleanup day. Still managed to find something unpleasant on the floor? Just give the robot a bit of work right here. It's like SSDs after HDDs: you have to worry about having backups, but it'll be amazing in the meantime.

Rather prophetically, the cheap production has shown itself when something got cooked in the electronic insides and the vac entered the eternity of ‘error 03’.

I don't like the cleaning I have to do before I let the robot loose -- pick up toys; I could vacuum much faster than the robot does and without heavy lifting of items in my crowded flat.

But I usually don't vacuum, so overall I'm satisfied with my roborock.

Same. I can no longer just schedule it to run unattended. First I must “prepare the house to be roomba’d”.

This is something I’ve come to appreciate about my roomba. It trains me to keep my floor tidy. I don’t have kids, though, so it’s doable. Little guy sure loves to eat cables.

I don't know your particular setup, of course—but personally I quickly stopped worrying that the floor is occupied by something—unless it's small enough to be gobbled by the vac. The reason being, even if it's there today, I'll probably move it tomorrow or in a few days, and the robot will clean the spot after that. I guess someone could even split out a corner for toys with those infrared divisors, and occasionally let the robot loose in there manually.

Might be an application for more advanced computer vision in vacuums—to figure out which things are not to be sucked up. Though it smells of generic AI.

I love this feature! After a lifetime of throwing my socks on the floor, Roomba finally trained me to put them in the laundry hamper. I've learned to keep my floors tidy all the time, and my life is much better for it.

I like this feature, too! When I first got mine I had it set up to run only on certain days, as my small place doesn't need a lot of vacuuming. Then I discovered that the closer I got to the robot run, the tidier I was. So I wrote some code to make it run on random days, and that finally got me to stop trying to cheat.

Ha, yes. I haven't had a roomba for a few years, but it was always an adventure finding it on those days when it hadn't made it back to the dock.

More than once I found it under my bed, a sock half swallowed in its intake.

Poor little guy didn't survive the container voyage from Australia to the UK.

I think my family is unfortunately going to have to wait for some sort of robot with a snow shovel attachment and a big bucket to go dump everything in.

We used to have a roomba, first edition, before kids, but it got broken after a year, the first kid came and we have not been clean since.

By the way, in regard to removing larger items (as opposed to small ones that could be eaten by the vac), I'd also like to note that the floor doesn't really get dusty under those items. Because, of course, dust collects on the items instead. So there's no even particular reason to shuffle things around if the robot can find its way around them—and judging by my cat's relationship with the vac, the latter can go around plenty of things that are getting in its way.

Yeah - pre-kids I used the robot vacuum regularly.

Post-kids, it takes 10 minutes to tidy the floor and 5 to vacuum it myself (and I do a better job), so it's not as much use.

My girlfriend left a cable hanging out of the front of the playstation, I came home to find the robovac hanging vertically halfway to the shelf having consumed the usb cable and started climbing up.

A photo of that would probably be mildly popular

> If it misses a spot today, it will get it tomorrow.

One of the complaints about the smarter robot vacuums (like ones that map the house) is that they consistently miss the same spots every time. I think the dumb "bounce off the walls randomly" algorithm is actually the best one for this kind of product.

Perhaps some randomness can be part of the smarter ones algorithms.

One actual problem I had with a most basic Roomba(6xx) was it was banging a shelf in the room at exact same angle each run every day, which eventually toppled a thing on it and splayed water all around.

I felt like writing a automobile recall notice that says “inappropriate X leading to Y after Z repeats” of which X seems pretty benign item like a wire sheath was just one step too thin or a strap was too tight by a notch.

Damn those things are consistent and it’s extraordinary how powerful consistency is...

The correct bug fix for this is to move random items in the house periodically. If it can't be random, then you can.

I wonder how you'd compute/reason about/define the axis point dividing the complexity of remembering to move random items around and the complexity of just doing the vacuuming yourself.

The killer feature for me would be if it could empty its dust container in a secondary location so I didn’t have to do for a month.

Higher end Roombas have that.

Right here: https://www.wired.com/review/review-irobot-roomba-i7/

A good way to explore the algorithms of the robot is to set it out to run in the night. At the entrance of the room, set a high obstruction. Set up a tripod. Take long exposure photos every minute or so. Then turn on the lights/wait till day time. Take another photo. Overlay the photos in an editor program. Spot the missing areas.

EDIT: here are some examples by other people: https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/lon...

And here are some resources if you have a Xiaomi robot vacuum cleaner (also sold as RoboRock) https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud

And make sure that any LED on the robot is visible from the direction of the camera regardless of the orientation of the robot ;)

I'm assuming you forgot to mention the light on the robot in the dark.

In order to get the progression of the run, you could have an RGB LED sweeping through a color scale during the run.

The Xiaomi ones map out and display their path in the app, no long exposure photos needed

The Roomba e5 I briefly owned only worked with all the lights on.

I do not trust Eufy brand anymore. We had a Eufy RoboVac and within its warranty period, battery went bust. When attached to its station, it gave some sound errors which is apparently tied to its battery. I contacted support several times, reminded their obligation for warranty period but they did nothing. They asked me to find a "certified technician" to get a report such that this malfunction was present when I made the purchase. I asked what do they want as "certified technician" and where can I get one. They stopped replying. This took a week.

Fortunately I bought the item from Amazon. I issued a dispute and within minutes they created a return label and issued a refund.

I now have a Roomba. I'm pretty happy so far.

iRobot is a great company. They'll sell you parts to repair your robot. The take refurbished units and sell them for educational purposes [https://www.irobot.com/about-irobot/stem/create-2], with a fully open and documented platform [https://www.irobot.lv/uploaded_files/File/iRobot_Roomba_500_...]. It's so obviously a company that started as somebody's grad school project, and remains so to this day, and I mean that in the best possible way.

As usual, a bunch of ripoff Chinese competitors will sell you a cheaper piece of shit that you'll find yourself throwing away in three years. Resist the temptation.

Another company is Bobsweep (Canadian company) that sells you parts too and their machines are easy to repair.

Yeah. I got a squeaky wheel on my Roomba 960, sent an email to customer services, they just sent me a whole new wheel module with instructions on how to replace it. Really really great service. And it looks like pretty much all parts of the robot can be bought and replaced separately.

Note: Create 2 is just low-end 6xx missing a few parts. If you're going to buy it just for robotics experiments, just buy the cheapest models that looks exactly the same(not E5, 690 or 800), or older(OG, 400, 500). Costs the same but when you're bored they vacuum your floors!

In my opinion, the iRobot support and parts availability are worth the premium. Our 2013 model 650 is still running great. All we’ve had to do is periodically replace worn out brushes and spinners and at some point we replaced the main battery. This is all easily done with a screwdriver.

Totally agree. I just checked my order history: I bought my current Roomba 650 in May 2014, so it's been running 4-5 days a week for almost 6 years straight with various simple part replacements. Really great little product, and excellent customer support and user community.

At one point the tread wore out on the wheels, so it was struggling to get over the threshold into different rooms. Rather than buy a whole new set of wheels, I found a blog saying that Kirby 301291 vacuum cleaner belts just happen to perfectly fit on roomba wheels and work as replacement treads. Now it's been happily rolling around on vacuum belts for the past year or more.

I absolutely agree. I got a broken 650 from my sister, fixed it with a cheap easily available part, and it has worked beautifully for the last three years.

It is also a joy to maintain and was obviously designed by people who care about maintenance being reasonable.

Same here with a 650 I got in 2016. It runs daily, and all I've ever had to do with it is replace the brushes/spinners twice.

The battery on my RoboVac 11 went bust right out of the warranty period even if it probably had ~15 recharge cycles on it. Bought a replacement (~30E) and the vacuum is happily chugging along doing a good job. This being said I assume Eufy is saving money on that front so I'm not entirely sure my next purchase will be from them.

so I take it the battery is user replacable? That's my worry with most of these electronics, the product can be fine, but if the battery is welded in place, then it becomes a huge PITA to replace.

Easily, one screw and a lid away on this model [0]. Phones are a bit harder to work inside with the constrained space and far more delicate parts (screen, screws, etc.). Maybe for a vacuum this is a lot harder to achieve even if manufacturers insist on it.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/eufy-RoboVac-Replacement-Compatible-A...

I find this a little surprising because, Anker, Eufy's parent company, has a good reputation from my perspective.

Anker has utterly lost my faith - all 3 Anker QI charging pads failed within months, and the USB-C to A cables I bought more recently don't want to stay connected on the data pins.

Same. Anker does not make quality anymore.

I bought a Neato XV 21 something like 6 or 7 years ago. Still doing great, I've only changed the filters and battery pack once. we moved to a house a few months ago and it still manages to vacuum the entire upper floor (~800sqft) with 1.5 passes.

My anecdote: our Eufy has been working great for just under a year, now. We have a lab that sheds bucket-loads off hair, and it is generally able to keep things clean. The only real problem is that I was a bit over aggressive cleaning the roller brush, and removed some padding, and now I need to get a new one.

I've had the Xiaomi one for a couple of years, the one with lidar. It's great. Used to love watching the app as the little guy gets to work and the map starts building realtime.

It runs Ubuntu, you can root it. And even get spotify running on it.

https://github.com/dgiese/dustcloud

https://medium.com/@anxodio/how-to-get-spotify-working-on-yo...

I've recently got a Xiaomi one myself. Will look into these ressources, thanks.

Is rooting it worth it? I have one but I haven't bothered with rooting it yet. It would be worth it if I could start-stop it locally, as the app has to go through China and the latency is ~2 seconds, which is terrible.

You don't even need to root it.

Most Xiaomi smart-devices speak a protocol called miIO. There are several libraries/bindings for your favorite languages/tools as well as a nice CLI tool[0].

The only tricky part is getting the device token[1]. But once you have that it's smooth sailing.

[0] https://python-miio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/vacuum.html [1] https://python-miio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/discovery.html#...

Oh I had set that up and then forgot about it, I'll give it another shot. Thanks!

Oh wow I had no idea this was all out there. Thanks :)

> you can root it. And even get spotify running on it

Some might ask why you'd want Spotify on your vacuum? I would have it play Dolly Parton's "(Working) 9 to 5" on loop whenever it's running. I feel like that would be hilarious forever. Other suggestions welcome.

Kraftwerk – We Are the Robots

Dan Mangan - Robots ~ "Robots need love too..."

I like the one where the guy made the vacuum scream every time it ran into something

You talk like you've never heard of DJ Roomba.

The algorithm of going straight until you hit a wall, and then turning a (constant) angle has some really cool properties -- some angles/starting positions will eventually let you cover the entire floor, while others will produce beautiful repeating patterns [1].

One key insight for visualizing "hitting a wall and then turning" is that you can pretend that the walls in your room are covered with mirrors that you can walk through. Hitting the wall and bouncing at an angle is equivalent to approaching the mirror at your angle, and then continuing straight through it into the mirrored side. You can verify this in your bathroom mirror by bouncing your finger off it, vs. pretending it goes straight through: in both cases, which side of the bathroom does it bounce toward?

After a finite distance of continuing straight through mirror-walls, do you end up in your original location? I.e. can you see the back of your head in the room of mirrors? If so, then you're on a periodic path, and you're not going to cover the entire floor.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1810.11310.pdf

Interesting! I wonder if it matters for this case... the walls of the room aren't going to be exactly parallel (or may be a trapezoid, pentagon, or worse), the robot's wheels are going to slip somewhat on each turn so the angle turned won't always be the same, etc. Stupid real world :-)

I too bought a robotic vacuum out of curiosity (high end iRobot) and found the algorithm to be completely inadequate both in it's mapping and it's ability to adequately cover the area that it was supposed to clean. Additionally it left random patterns in the carpet that could only be described as a drunk toddler vacuuming... in other words, it didn't look clean. It took more than 3 days to map the three rooms that it was supposed to clean, getting stuck away from it's base unable to return because it's charge ran out. It would also get stuck under my bed. I'm not certain how it's possible that it could have done a worse job. I waited for years to enter the robot vacuum market and can state unequivocally that waiting 9 generations wasn't enough of a wait.

You should have got the Roborock S6, I have the S5 (older model) and its surprisingly good for around 300 USD.

It vacuums in laps, no random fumbling around and hoping you've gotten the room. We have a longhair cat and I run it around the apartment every couple days, filling entirely with cat hair every time from one cat in a hardwood floor apartment. It's been great.

Yep, I have the RoboRock S5 and it's light years ahead of my old Roomba.

I honestly have no idea how Roomba is still in business

It keeps getting better, too! The new update makes the S5 basically the same as the newer model (except that it's louder)... I had the original RoboRock and it worked really well. We replaced the battery and gave it to my wife's grandmother, then bought the S5 thinking the mop feature would be in some way useful, but I'm still happy with how well the S5 tracks its brush/filter lifespan and the software upgrades!

Yeah, the mop feature is a joke. I took one look at it and realized that instantly. Everything else about it is pretty sweet though.

I like the mop feature. It is far from a true mopping, but still the floor feels less dusty than after just using the vacuum alone. That said, it may be a placebo effect on my part. I should do a blind test someday.

The problem with the mop feature is that it completely defeats the purpose of having an unattended robot keep your whole house clean, since you have to constantly refill the water reservoir, and it can't transition between carpet and hard floors without getting water on your carpet.

I guess depends on the area. It gets through our ground floor, which are all wood, with just a bit of water left over. Maybe 700 Sq ft

The Neato vacuums do a much better job in this respect IMHO. They figure out the space with lidar and use a rectangular pattern.

Absolutely. I've had both and the Neato is much better than the Roomba. The way I look at it - it's as if the Roomba was designed by students that just took a class on chaos theory and watched Jurassic Park, where the Neato was designed by actual engineers. The Roomba is fun to watch bounce around randomly. The Neato just vacuums the carpet in a logical algorithm, the same way a human would, more or less.

The Neato and RoboRock vacuums are the only ones I recommend for their efficient navigation. Although I had three different Neatos die on me, so now I only use RoboRock.

Neato has been doing localization/mapping based vacuum since earlier, so they're obviously more sophisticated. But anecdotally with the state of the floor as the metric, 622 seems to do better than XV-11 despite being horribly dumb.

I had a Roomba sometime after 2006 and it was dumb but not in a bad way. It had a drop sensor, bump sensor, and tire sensors. It would primarily move in a switch back overlapping pattern and had a couple different fallback patterns that would kick in if the bump sensor triggered to frequently. It didn't necessarily hit 100% of space in the first try but it could autodock and recharge, and had a couple invisible walls to cordon it off.

It got stuck occasionally and needed to be rescued but once you knew what it got stuck on you could clean up, as you would with normal vacuuming, and it would be mostly fine.

The newer robot vacuums have a lot more tech but don't seem to have improved upon the basic functionality much. They still get stuck a lot, have trouble with deep pile carpet, and don't get everything.

So I don't know which one you have, but my mum bought herself the S9+ for christmas and wow, we were actually betting that it will fail as she lives in a huge house with a relatively complex layout(the living room has a circular shape with multiple entrances and central staircase) but nope, the robot deals with all of it fine. It takes longer than the 2 hour battery life to clean it all, but that's not a problem - it goes back to the base, empties its own bin, recharges, and then continues where it left off. It's truly amazing in terms of how well the mapping deals with that house, it shouldn't be that good.

I've owned a mid-segment Roomba in 2019 for about 48 hours. The downsides included aggressively bumping into my thin-legged chairs, moving them for a couple of centimeters before coming to a stop. Not being able to vacuum black carpet. Not being able to vacuum dark rooms, so I either have to leave all the lights on when I leave or leave the curtains open (thus letting in cold). It broke the delicate moulding at the base of the radiators by ramming into it. It would distribute the coconut fibers of the doormat all over the house. It would go under the bed but would not be able to get out. And I had to enable 2.4Ghz WiFi after all these years. Which was troublesome because my iPhone was connected to the 5Ghz network and it tries to copy your iPhone network to the Roomba.

Returned it. Doing a 15 minute vacuum every Saturday morning is easier for me than to deal with all this, and it keeps the house tidy during the week.

> " Dammit, Amazon, it's so hard to quit you."

What? I'm not even in the US, but DDG'ing the "Eufy RoboVac 30" brings me straight to the manufacturer's website, where it's even $40 cheaper. Why give "Lord Bezos" a piece of the cake, when he doesn't even need to have one?

Maybe it wasn't so at the time of writing, but I have a weird feeling it's en vogue to claim to be against Amazon, but to then find some half-assed reason as to why they're still the "only sensible" choice, and so it's all good. WTF? Are these Amazon-financed articles?

Impatience and one-stop-shopping are compelling motivators.

True, but a 5 minute search for a competitor that'll save you $10 is effectively you working at $120/h in regards to your wallet.

Sure, I wish I could claim otherwise, but in my experience, it's almost never worth going for one-stop buys :/

When I buy something off another site…

- Will I have to register an account? Will I have to take time unsubscribing from the email lists they sign me up for?

- Will the checkout form work? Will it be secure? Will it be a single page, or will there be separate pages of shipping info, billing info, payment method, confirmation of sale, and receipt?

- Will any of those pages be broken, forcing me to start over?

- When will it show up? I'm not even so impatient that I need the "two day thing" (I usually pick a later date for a $1 Amazon digital credit anyway), but, when? There are nearly never estimates, and about half the remaining MIGHT send a tracking number later.

Other things crop up, but basically there's countless little things that can go wrong and you if you pick Amazon they _all_ go away.

You do have the real possibility of receiving a counterfeit item from Amazon though, which you do not have directly from the manufacturer.

Yeah, no kidding. I'd rather deal with all of the other problems (which aren't really problems as I'm not liable anyway), than risking getting a counterfeit product from Amazon. Also, more websites need to implement Apple Pay.

Certainly a problem with easy-to-counterfeit items, but I would think knocking off a robot vacuum would be pretty difficult?

more likely to get a used returned item being sold as new; I bought an expensive water filter cartridge from AMZ and got shipped one that was obviously used. Somebody probably bought a new one, then returned their current used one. AMZ refunded money without question tho. You could get a new vac with a spent expensive battery pretty easily.

> "Will I have to register an account? Will I have to take time unsubscribing from the email lists they sign me up for?"

Registering an account would shoo me away too, but with PayPal and a study that showed this'll scare 75% of potential customers away, that mostly seems to be a thing of the past. Subscription lists in the EU have been greatly reduced by GDPR. Some still offend this, granted, but they are occuring less and less.

> "Will the checkout form work? Will it be secure? Will it be a single page, or will there be separate pages of shipping info, billing info, payment method, confirmation of sale, and receipt?"

The bureaucratic things you mention are governed by law here in Germany, so I needn't bother with that, for their (prolonged) existence presumes compliance. The technical security details are legit concerns in my opinion, too. OTOH, sticking to one merchant brings with it the risks of mono-cultures.

> "Will any of those pages be broken, forcing me to start over?"

Come on.

> "When will it show up? I'm not even so impatient that I need the "two day thing" (I usually pick a later date for a $1 Amazon digital credit anyway), but, when? There are nearly never estimates, and about half the remaining MIGHT send a tracking number later."

I usually can plan such purchases in advance, that a delay of even a week doesn't bother me. Parcel delivery services in Germany rarely require more than 5 working days for national shipments.

> "Other things crop up, but basically there's countless little things that can go wrong and you if you pick Amazon they _all_ go away. "

For this, I appear to have eBay. I feel they grant more autonomy to the merchant, which I believe to be actually better for the customer in the long-run. Amazon feels closer to the customer, but such a customer strategy runs the risk of a bait-and-switch to the disadvantage of the customer, once their monopoly solidifies.

"Come on" what? It happens all the time.

You just countered my list with a list of "this usually doesn't happen" responses. But sometimes they do, and it adds up. And don't get me started on eBay, where about 15% of stuff I've bought has gotten lost somewhere in the void.

"I might be mildly inconvenienced so it's 100% necessary for me to support a company that abuses its workers, sorry guys :/"

I don't like it. I also don't have time to run all over town (or web) trying to find a highly specific bicycle seat post, or go to every sporting goods store to get the one brand of bouldering chalk I like, or every housewares store shopping for the specific coffee grinder that will fit in my 300sq-foot apartment.

Maybe I should go Thoreau and live in a cabin, but until then I'm very busy. I do a lot of other things to adapt my life to try and improve the general world, but ecommerce habits just isn't making the cut yet.

Can you help me understand how you know the other companies are better?

There's no denying that Amazon is known for being not great to workers, especially warehouse staff who are hired as contractors. But long before Amazon existed I did temp factory and warehouse work for a couple of summers. I promise you that also varied from miserable to criminal. I have no reason to think a random vendor is better than Amazon here.

Reasonable people could differ, but my current thinking is I'm better off pressuring Amazon, who at least has a brand they care about, than to swap to whatever anonymous company is doing US fulfillment for a random Chinese manufacturer.

The arguments for ways other companies are better work both in and out of favor for them. Conversely, centralizing it (Amazon becomes a monopoly) also works both ways: It's possible worker conditions can be better or worse compared to the average standard, but with greater number of them in a single go.

Thus the counter-argument, for me at least, stands out, which is less volatility from a decentralized market, however, if a centralized market would turn out to have better employee conditions, then this reduced volatility would in turn work against other companies as an argument, and so we're back at square one.

History tells us that monopolies tend to ...treat their employees badly? I don't know and I think it depends on the company and market it serves, but my gut-feeling says yes and so, to me, less volatility sounds like the sanest gut-decision I can make.

It's up to each and everyone for themselves to decide, I guess.

When I stopped using Amazon two years ago I started using ebay almost exclusively. I've never received the wrong item or have had things gotten lost. Maybe I'm just lucky.

Even if thats the case, I would rather have an item get lost and wait for it to get reshipped than my experience with Amazon mailing me the wrong product and then waiting to mail it back, get a refund, and then order the right product.

When I'm on a site who's checkout doesn't complete, I spent a minute looking for another seller and buy it from them. I would rather use a minute looking somewhere else then waiting a few days because I have to return the wrong product to Amazon.

One of my concerns is on the security front, specifically credit card info, if PayPal isn't an option. I'm interested in trying out Privacy's one-time use credit cards to reduce that risk.

I'm in the US and I'm seeing $240 on both the manufacturer's website and Amazon (Sold by EufyHome and Fulfilled by Amazon). Amazon even has a $15 coupon.

I can even join Prime and then save $24, bringing it to a total of $39 in discount. And all I'd need to do is join the Amazon ecosystem and I'd probably even be one of the customers that Amazon would make a net loss on, to my gain!

Honestly, that just trips my too-good-to-be-true alarm bells. The times I'd need Amazon I can usually find a similarly priced competitor, where buying is more of a breeze and bliss than Amazon, having to work through the special conditions of coupons, terms, etc.

There was only one case in my experience, in 2013 or -14, where Amazon was the "only choice", when I "want-needed" a cheap China-made USB microscope, and Amazon had it, but not a single merchant on eBay. The device was quite fresh on the market, and about half a year later was also available on eBay. I waited.

To muddy the waters even more, I'm also in the US and I'm seeing $215 (plus the $15 coupon) on Amazon.

I see an older model with 1300Pa suction available at $219; the current 1500Pa I see at $249

I guess you should read kaskavalci's comment for a good reason to still buy from Amazon.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592661

>Are these Amazon-financed articles?

I mean...duh? Have you been living under a rock? Amazon affiliate has been a great passive income strategy for over a decade.

...which is just a modern way of saying "sales agent", yes?

It's muddy, because AFAIK, anyone can write on Medium, so it's not immediately recognizable as marketing, correct? Which, I presume, is also part of the strategy.

It's a legit strategy, it's just that one needs to keep in mind to second-guess everything the author says, since it could be a paid ad. Something, something along the lines of commercial and independent reviewers. I guess it's a never-ending war that must be fought.

The manufacturer's website shows $239.99 for me, the post says he got it for under $200. I'm not sure how you get $40 cheaper from the manufacturer out of that.

In addition, checking the Internet Archive shows that the manufacturer had it listed for $269.99 in September 2019, two months after the post was written.

I'm still in the cynic camp for a few reasons. 1. My flat is small. I can do a decent vac in about 15 minutes. 30 minutes if I do under the bed. 2. When I do the "big vac", I have to move 6 dining room chairs. Then shift the table a few inches. Zoom. Shift if back. Same goes for some other legged furniture. 3. I also do the windowsills. No bot can do this. 4. Don't you end up with little arched dust patterns in every corner of every room? How does a round vacuum do this? Seriously! This is the deal-breaker for me unless they have some little robot-wars-style dust-brush that shoots out to get into the 90 degree angles.

All that said, I really really want one!

They have a brush.

I've found that while it doesn't do a lot of what a human would, it can do it daily. In my case the time savings made it pay for itself in half a year.

> I've found that while it doesn't do a lot of what a human would, it can do it daily. In my case the time savings made it pay for itself in half a year.

My home has pretty high thresholds/doorsteps (what are they even called?), and the robot always gets stuck. Thus, we clean together once a week: it does the vacuuming, and I clean the bathroom, kitchen etc and help it go where it wants.

This kinda works, but I wonder if there are models specifically with higher clearing for getting over bigger obstacles?

Just make a small ramp for it.

It's smarter to adapt to the future. If you have the choice, have no carpets, all furniture on legs at least 10cm high and no door thresholds. Or buy one robot for each connected area in the house.

Also at the same time as you're doing something else. I often run the roomba as I clean other stuff or do the dishes when I prepare for a visitor. If you run it daily or every other day, the first couple of days it's full of dust and hair, then less and less. I view this as evidence that it's needed.

I don't dare keep it on a schedule nowadays, because I have kids who leave stuff on the floor everywhere, including charging cables for phones that can get tangled up in the roomba. What I usually do is a quick check under the couch and tv bench, then start it manually when I leave for work.

So we have a roomba, and hands down that's one of my favourite devices that we own - we just pretty much never have to hoover downstairs, it starts automatically at 9am every morning, we come home to a clean house, it's amazing. When we need to clean the upstairs bedrooms I can just leave it there, press start, and it does its thing and we can go and have dinner in the meantime. Yes, you still have to hoover manually from time to time. No, it doesn't do corners very well. But the fact that it can automatically clean at least one level of your house every single day is just incredible.

1; Same here. I still prefer to do other things with my time. Of course this is a luxury, but an affordable one.

4; There is a side brush (maybe even two) on most models. For the exact reason you mention.

I have a Roomba s9 and a Dyon v10 in a 48sqm apartment. The Roomba does not replace the Dyson, but in terms of floors the Dyson is mostly reserved for spot-cleaning. The S9 gets all the edges, and goes around each table and chair leg (though I prefer to put the chairs up on the table for easier reach).

The only thing I hate is that it gets stuff trapped in there so easily. It is meant to have some sort of anti-cord-catching technology, but unless I am very careful I will find it eating a charger or a cat toy or something. It also takes longer than my handheld vacuum, but I don't mind that - often I just quickly pick things up before I run out to the store and let it run as I leave, and then come home to a vacuumed apartment.

My cats also prefer the Roomba even though the noise is comparable. They hide from the Dyson, but couldn't give a crap about the robot running around.

My housemate and I have the exact same vacuum as OP: a Eufy Robovac 30C.

1) It runs around our flat which I think we could vacuum well in about 15-20 minutes, perhaps similar to yours in size.

2) The vacuum happily bumbles around under our table and chairs and it seems to do a pretty good job. If we want it to clean where the chairlegs are, we just move the chairs against the wall the night before and move them back the following evening when we get back from work.

3) I feel like this is a cheap shot: it doesn't clean bathtubs or toilet bowls either (and like windowsills, it doesn't advertise to clean those, either).

4) No. It may be round, but it has two rotating brushes placed towards the front which get dust and crumbs out of corners, but the brush/vacuum portion itself does not reach right to the edges of the machine, so you're unlikely to get deep cleaning on the edges of carpets.

Overall I'm very impressed with it: it consistently comes back with a lot of dust and crumbs in its bin (we run it Mon, Wed, Fri), replacement parts (e.g. brushes) are cheap from the usual suspects in China, the edge cleaning is more intelligent than discussed by the linked article, and the floor under our sofa (a heavy 3-seater) has never been so consistently dust-free.

It doesn't 100% remove the need for a manual clean/vacuum completely, you still have to run over the places it doesn't get - occasionally - and yes obviously it doesn't do raised surfaces, windowsills, stairs or the upper corners of the ceiling... and obviously how much benefit you get depends on your home layout.

We've the exact same model as the article, bought on a sale last year for ~£180, and have been incredibly satisfied. The difference between a once a week/fortnight deeper clean and having it run over every day (before we get up!) has been incredibly obvious. It has also added an... incentive to avoid floor clutter.

The value proposition is that they can do 90% of the job with 10% of the effort. It takes me 1-2 minutes to pick up stray socks and usb cords and start the vacuum right before I walk out the door for work. The things it doesn't do can be dealt with with a broom and duster, and that ends up being very infrequent.

It is especially noticeable if you have a cat or dog. Even through weekly cleaning with a powerful "normal" vacuum cleaner won't help with everyday hair and dust accumulation. And personally I'm often too lazy even for a once per week cleaning. This thing (I have Roomba 960) collects most of the dirt in the most visible places. It really makes a difference. And corners don't matter in a big picture where every furniture item collects a ton of dust in hard to reach places.

I'm in the same boat as you are, with the same objections and all.

But overall I found we end up vacuuming the flat a lot more now that we have the roborok than before, so that's a big plus for me.

My wife spent half the money we spent on the roborok on a cordless samsung manual vacuum cleaner that broke in a year; I'm convinced I've seen the light now and that robot vacuuming is the future.

30 minutes is a long time. The robot vac cleaner does it’s rounds everyday. There is not way I would want to spend 30 minutes everyday on this.

My brother inlaw had a Roomba after testing several of these. He went out one day and came back several hours later to find his dog had defecated on the floor and the robo-vac had smeared the entire downstairs with poo. The vac was never the same after that

In the vacuum's defense, I wouldn't be either.

Great read!

15 years ago, I had one of the first robot lawnmovers (Husqvarna) and did exactly the same thing: Watched it for hours, observing how it worked.

Back then, it seems it was programmed with instructions:

- Go! If you hit an edge, rotate in a random direction and ... Go! - If crossing the base-wire (a buried wire leading to the base station) while battery level < 40%, follow it and charge.

Yep.

Another one is watching 3D printer’s. There’s something soothing with just starting at the print head while the plastic oozes out and creates something tangible. It’s Star Trek’s replicator v0.00001. After a while, you realise you’ve been staring at it for 45 minutes.

I like this video from Philip Bloom who has two vacuum cleaners running at night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdR0JT652T4

I won't spoil what happens with them :) But the interesting thing happens at about 1:10 into the video.

After I read this one (didn't find the original again but this one explains - https://mashable.com/2016/08/12/roomba-spreads-dog-poop/ ) I decided to not have one in my house.

> Thanks to Lord Bezos ... Dammit, Amazon, it's so hard to quit you

I'm confused how Amazon is relevant here. This product is available from many online retailers under $200.

If you want to quit Amazon... then maybe try even a little?

Be wary about running your Roomba unattended if you have a dog. Our pup dropped a load in our bedroom and the Roomba smeared it 5 feet across the carpet. Some bits were stuck to the front bumper, so the Roomba left little poo polka dots on our baseboards.

Haha! Some pet owners have been recommending getting one as a way to get rid of pet hair if/when I got a puppy. This is one of the best examples of the unintended consequences. I guess house-training is a must.

This article is good, but it misses out a few more essential features about the device which make it a little bit more intelligent than they've discovered so far:

- It has infrared proximity sensors spread around the bumper which allow it to slow down before hitting a wall or other large flat surface, avoid it entirely (for example to turn around and shoot off in another direction), or do quite precise edge cleaning without relying on the bumper. This works best on walls or skirting boards.

- The base station has an infrared beacon which the robot uses to find id. Furthermore, the robot can judge whether it is on or off-axis relative to the base station (i.e. whether it is lined up straight or not). The robot doesn't just dive in from any angle: it tries to line up first.

- It has some level of stall detection for its motors: if the brushes or wheels get stuck on something, it will stop. The internet-connected versions of these vacuums will send out a notification when this happens.

Thanks the burning question I had was how it finds the base station again after roaming.

It’s sort of cool to watch it through an infrared camera. The front proximity sensor is like a set of headlights.

By now there are many videos of robot vacuums covering areas. Its very informative. Not necessary to wait and see what a brand will do; just find a video and watch it in fast-time.

I have a Shark IQ which some videos rate as the best in the middle class. We have 1200sqft to cover and it can do about half that on a charge, methodically.

But it often gets stuck behind the AV center, or behind the piano, or wedged under my wife's chair or a certain cabinet baseboard in the bathroom. At least once a week. And with nobody home, the voice alert calling for help is pointless (scheduled to run when nobody is home).

So it just runs its batteries down waiting. If it could do one more thing better, I would say go into low-power when stuck?

Anyway we like it, gave it a name ("Puck") and each day check if Puck 'made it home'. If not its a pleasant job walking around to find where Puck got stuck. Not a bad purchase at all, considering the always-clean floors(!) and the entertainment value to boot.

my wife showed up with one she found on clearance and then with some additional discounts. I was skeptical but every time it runs the little dustbin is completely full. I figure if it didn't run, all that dirt, dust, pet hair would still be on the floor. I wonder if all the roombas gossip about how dirty our floors are to other roombas over wifi..

In case folks are interested in digging deeper, there is libre robot vacuum firmware:

https://librervac.org/

Too many people make the mistake of assuming that a robot should solve the problem the same way that humans do.

You have to into the account the respective strengths and weaknesses of humans and robots.

I can easily best a robot at sensing the layout of my living room, but a robot can easily best me at perseverance.

I got a robo-vac, but ultimately stopped using it because of chairs and children. I had to clean up in order to run it at all, and it would get stuck under the chairs and not be able to get out. (I guess exactly the wrong sizing.)

I mainly got it because my wife and I have a dust-mite allergy and cleaning the floor with water or HEPA vacuum can help. We've replaced it with a much more expensive (and totally manual) hizero[1] wet vacuum, and it's great. Also, we have tile floors so wet always cleans better than a vacuum (and wet pads need to be cleaned/replaced way too often on a robo-vacuum).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og8lhk3oZe8

I had a similar problem with the robot getting stuck under the furniture. Shimming up the legs by just a few mm did the trick.

I suspect there is some bias going on here. I bet if you just watched a simulation of the robot (which could probably even run in the browser), you wouldn't be all that impressed. The fact that it has motors and that it moves makes it cool.

Nobody seems to mention: How do you empty the dust compartment without stirring up the dust?

My vacuum (Robzone) collects it in plastic box that is to be opened and cleaned out into trashbin with attached brush, the dust inevitably gets airborne.

do it outside or spray water into it

This. I use a bag free (manual) vacuum and I even though I can manage it without water and not create too much airborne dust, if you just spray water it slightly it will stick to eachother and become big balls.

Doing it outside already.

There is also paper hepa filter on it that can't get wet. Even so, not sure if mucking with dirty water is worth it.

There is also the silly solution: Empty it while holding the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner nearby.

You stop caring about 1% of dust escaping after a few cleanings :)

Even when it lands on me?

Yes. It's a bit of dust. Unless you have severe allergies, who cares?

No amount of pm2.5 particulates is good for you, allergies or not.

Shark IQ has a bin in the dock. It self-empties with a blower each time it docks. Empty that over the bin in the garage once a month (just pick it up like a suitcase with the handle, carry it out, press the button on the side and the bottom trapdoor opens and whoosh! all the dust outside in the bin).

I have a tiny shop vac that I use to clean it once a week or so:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003M2F7NI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_z5...

This also cleans the filter really well, letting it last over a year.

my xiaomi has a separate dust bin that you can remove from the unit and open elsewhere. I just stick my hands in the trash bin and open it there. For the upright dyson vacuum which I use on higher pile carpet that clogs the robot, I have to take the canister to the large trash can outside because dust gets absolutely everywhere.

I can relate to the author's curiosity of how such a random movement ends up doing a near perfect clean in the given time. I have tried to understand how my basic Roomba works as well. One simple algorithm could be that it is simply storing the path it travels randomly like a criss-cross, zig-zag path and ends up filling a imaginary polygon with those zig-zag movement. That's probably the reason it does not get stuck doing the same part of a room again and again.

I think it could be perfect if you do something like Bose and measure the building before installing the bots.

As a professional cleaner I have the following suggestion:

Make A cleaning schedule with different frequencies for different tasks. For humans you have to limit complexity, the robot cant get enough of it.

The trick is to do a great job with the least runtime and perfect timing.

1 (Highest frequency): The visible areas when walking from the front door to the seat where your guests will sit. The entire house can be either 1) a complete mess, it will still look clean. Or 2) the entire house can be supper clean it still wont look clean.

Some cameras would be nifty here.

1.1: edges for 1

2: Same as 1 for all frequently used paths in the house except those covered by 1. Could split this up into levels of frequency.

2.1: edges for 2

3rd: All open surfaces not covered by 1 and 2.

3.1: all edges not covered by 1.1 and 2.1

The edges are done roughly every 4th round.

The 1st it can do multiple times per day depending on traffic. (1 times is a good minimum) It could by a dynamic number based on motion sensors. Timing is everything, if the room is empty it can do its thing for 2-3 minutes (quit if someone walks in) Nr 2 is done half to 1/3 as frequent as 1. Nr 3 is done half to 1/3 as frequent as 2.

I've used the above system for years and it continues to amaze me how quick one can execute the routine and how clean everything looks. Nr 1 sometimes takes no more than a gaze around the room.

Without such system one just does "everything" every time which is a lot more work than it seems. (enough work to cut the same corners every time) The result also looks really inferior.

Robot vacuums have been such a game changer for me. It's funny because functionally they are worse than a cordless sick or full-size vacuum in almost every way. However being able to turn it on before I head for work everyday makes a giant difference.

One thing I am skeptical of is robot vacuums that connect to the internet. Some of the higher end Roombas do that and I'm skeptical that it makes them more efficient. Wrote some more about it here:

https://productdork.com/t/whats-the-best-robot-vacuum-cleane...

The good news is that the Eufy's seem to work fine without any internet connectivity. I've got the Eufy RoboVac 11S and would highly recommend it. Unlike my previous Roomba, it doesn't speed up before bumping into things—it mostly avoids it. Also, it is significantly quieter.

We got one of these about three years ago. It saved our relationship.

The big complaint I always hear is "yeah but the pattern is random, it doesn't clean the whole floor evenly"

That is technically true, but the roomba cleans the floor for an hour, randomly, every day. This is a tremendous amount of cleaning. It pulls probably a pound of dirt off the floor every week, maybe more. Being able to have the floor cleaned - even randomly - for an hour, every day, makes a tremendous difference.

It might not get the spilled cat food for 2-3 days, but on day 4 it will get it. If you're only vacuuming once a week that is probably faster than a human would do it. It also vacuums all the weird spots, like under the sink in the bathroom, that you forget to check every week.

It also trains you to not leave stray socks, cell phone charging cables etc on the floor. Which is nice if you're not super super tidy.

Working on robotic lawn mowers - I still had the same feeling watching them do their thing. You can get pretty far with random turns with some edge following.

One thing that can help a lot is gps (or other absolute position). This can definitely help make sure your robot can make roughly the correct turn to get in those nooks.

I'm just starting to look into robotic lawn mower as a project. Do you have any recommended reading?

My in-laws just got one for their lake house, and it’s been equally fun to watch.

It’s the perfect thing for there because the last thing you want to do after a relaxing weekend at the lake is vacuum. Just hit go before leaving and you’re set.

Now I’m curious about the lawn ones. Anyone have any experience to share?

Getting a robot to fully path cover a surface by a random walk type algorithm is surprizingly difficult. One of the nuances most simulators do not fully grasp is that there are path rectifiers that emerge from physical interactions. Examples are collisions with walls where even though the robot comes in at a range of different angles, due to momentum and friction variance is lost and it leaves in a more narrow set of angles. Another example is grooved surfaces such as you find on wooden or tiled floors where slight angles to the groove are passively adjusted to the groove.

I worked extensively on small robotic vehicles in the 80's and 90's. My undergrad thesis was on a robotic simulator.

I'm on my second Roomba, and they've been great. What impressed me was how strong the suction was. My initial thoughts were "How can something that small ever pick up as much dirt as my regular vacuum?" But it actually does better than the upright - it picks up far more dirt/cat-hair, even when the upright is on a fresh filter. Which is important with a long-haired cat - I get cat-hair tumbleweeds on the stairs. I sweep them manually down to the next floor, and hit the start button and leave for work. I return to a freshly vacuumed floor.

Ob. cat tax: https://imgur.com/a/JHBue4Y

We bought my aging mother-in-law an iRobot mopping robot a couple years ago. It still works great and has freed up 30min to an hour of time per day she spent cleaning up the floor (they're Korean and spend a great deal of time doing activities on the floor so floor cleanliness is very important).

More importantly, her legs and back aren't doing so well these days and it's eliminated a painful and difficult daily task for her. She loves it almost as much as a pet. Just set it up and forget it for the next hour and the floor is mopped! The biggest problem it has is getting hung-up on her grandkids toys.

Looks like I cannot comment on dev.to but @deciduously should definitely give netlogo a try: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/

See existing models here: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/index.cgi

You can share your results as HTML if that's your thing.

I Bought 2.5-ish Roombas, maybe paid MSRP for one, and bought (and repaired) a couple of refurb units off Woot a decade or so ago.

It was an interesting exercise, and if our pet-load was a little lighter (I'd hate to see it get caught in Macaw Poop) I'd consider doing it again.

But.

They do wear and there was maintenance, and the batteries did lose capacity, and I eventually wandered away from them because there was a lot of labor in a labor saving device.

Maybe a mop for the trailer?

On the battery front - many of them are carrying lithium-ion batteries these days instead of the old nickel-metal hydride batteries that the older Roombas used, so their battery life is much better, until it's not.

The brushless motor on my original Xiaomi Robovac died and I was able to order a new one and install it myself from AliExpress for under $50. Big fan of Xiaomi products, even with their poor brand reputation. RoboRock is an off-shoot that's done really well, best-in-breed for most consumers.

In the UK you can currently buy this model for £179.99: https://www.eufylife.com/uk/products/variant/robovac-30c/T21...

I’d love a robotic vacuum. However, my house is not very flat. It has two main floors, but several rooms are offset from the main floors by about a foot or two (who knows why). Is it possible to put a small ramp on the stairs and tell the vacuums how to navigate it?

I have Eufy and a tiny 450 sq. ft. condo. I'm still amazed at how much dirt the vacuum picks up. 15 min of manual vacuuming is nothing compared to 2 continuous hours. Now that I have a dog, for $200, it's a no-brainer. When I come home it's a noticeable difference.

I have exactly the same model and I had exactly the same experience. I was mesmerized by the device to see how it would reach my entire apartment following really simple algos.

Also, I also had very little expectations in the beginning (just a bit less dust) but it did really amazing job.

I have a older model of Neato, it uses a lidar to map out the floor. First it traces the boundraries of the room or 10ftx10ft if it can't find a wall within that distance and then follows a rectangular path adjusting for any obstacles it finds in its path.

I totally agree with this! My spouse was making fun of me for staring at our Neato for almost its whole cleaning session. Watching the 2D LiDAR work while the robot does the path planning is absolutely fascinating to me for a machine that is less than $400.

Hardwood floors + large hairy dog + robo vacuum = less dog hair floating about.

I seriously don't know how we kept our sanity before having one of these. We really notice it if we don't run it some days.

It is bewildering why I will stop what I’m doing to watch my robot vacuum move around the floor. There is no rhyme or reason that I can figure out.

How do robotic vacuums handle the frills on carpets? I've got a carpet in my room that I think could defeat his enthusiasm haha

Future generations will look to us in amusement that in 2020 only thing robots could do people’s home was vacuuming.

Huh, so am I the only one seeing analogies to the behavior of some of my subsystems?

Love love love the Neato vacuum. With small kids, it has changed my life.

googled it apparently eufy is a brand of anker. suddenly not surprised by the price/quality.

Random is hard to beat.

learn about SLAM that's the algorithm they all use

Same here - we got a Neato one and I'd end up just standing there watching it. Totally fascinating - more than once I even got it out to show to people visiting! n:)

The Neato ones are a bit more methodical - they have a simple time-of-flight rotating laser sensor that does some SLAM-style stuff to map out the room which means it can do long continuous back-and-forth paths across the room (random image I found that explains it nicely: https://www.generationrobots.com/img/cms/Navigation-Algorith...) It has a charging base thing - it has a special pattern of stripes (kinda like a barcode I guess) behind a human-opaque panel that it uses to locate the charger.

While it was nice to just set the thing off and leave it to do its thing, it is not without problems though:

- it would very happily suck-up and chew cables or errant socks etc, and/or push low stuff around in front of it (e.g shoes). You had to spend time picking up phone charging cables and shoes etc before starting.

- it was not very accurate when it came to working around slanted chair/table legs (since its laser beam would only pick a point approx 5cm off of the ground, it would often hit the lower part of the leg that was in its path but that it could not see)

- it would often get stuck "under" things since there was about 1.5cm of extra height above the laser, and it feels like a lot of IKEA furniture is all just high enough for it to drive under and get wedged because it could not see it.

- it would sometimes get stuck in situations where there was a very tight space between two things (e.g. dining chair and a wall)but where in theory it was wide enough for it to drive down - it would end up trying to reverse out, but actually managing to reverse into the wall and jack its self up so the wheels lost traction.

- it does not know if it has "missed" something or done a good job, so often stubborn bits of fluff don't get picked up.

We've now had to retire ours because we got new carpets and it seems to get stuck a lot on the new carpet that is a bit thicker, often doing wheel spins for 30 seconds at a time. This seems to really confuse the SLAM algo since after it regains traction it ends up just driving straight into walls and stuff, despite having a laser sensor to tell it there was a wall there ... I guess it used some sort of encoding from its wheels as input too (perhaps as a effort to ignore "unexpected" laser returns - e.g. perhaps intended to ignore people pets when it has already mapped a room?)

We've replaced it with a dyson cordless stick vacuum thing with a wall-charger-dock thing. It doesn't take that much longer to do it by hand when you factor in the prep-time (picking up cables, moving dining chairs away from the table, moving things far away out from the wall etc etc), rescuing stuck robot time, or manual pick-ups of things it missed required afterwards, and then moving all of your chairs etc back into position. It is also nice to not have to bend down so much to move the robot one around, or empty its dustbin.

Author completely lost me at "I'm gonna keep her" … the ability to type that sentence out into the public domain. #smh

Agree - I stopped reading here.

Claiming ownership over women is not a funny joke, and completely lost my respect.

"keep"

1. have or retain possession of.

2. continue or cause to continue in a specified condition, position, course, etc.

Could mean keep her as a girlfriend, If I say "I'm keeping my doctor" I'm not claiming to personally take ownership of my GP.

I’m immediately put off by the second ‘graphs being fully devoted to publicly putting his girlfriend in her place?

We learn it’s „impulsive“ for her to make spending decisions (for him it would have been „decisive“, probably, given the good opportunity and how quick he is to think on his feet). He even moans about being „incapable of being upset“, as if it would be entirely normal, nay expected, to be upset about one‘s spouse making a sub-$200 spending decision.

Then he decides to „keep her“, as if it’s entirely his choice.

Yes, sure, somewhat outdated role models by themselves are somewhat benign, and probably too widespread to really get upset about. But this just stood out for me, somehow. Try reading it with reversed roles if you did not notice.

Or you know, it's tongue in cheek. Relationships are not formal, both me and my wife say things to each other which might look "off" without context, but obviously are absolutely fine. You read about a slice of someone's life and try to find issues with what you're reading, you're always going to find them.

You're way too sensitive and act as if we should conduct ourselves like formal robots. Sounds like a really boring world, loosen up a bit.

"Humor" and "publicly belittling your spouse" are completely orthogonal issues. As people tend to notice after middle school, life can be enjoyed without any out-group being made the subject of tired stereotypes.

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