Comment by aasasd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aasasd | Hacker News Reader

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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’.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Higher end Roombas have that.

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