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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

I think there's still some innovation remaining for the robot vacuum.

Like a robot vacuum that can handle stairs. The Roomba does a pretty decent job on a single-level, but has to be manually carried up/down stairs and someone still has to vacuum the stairs themselves.

And one that can automatically detect when it's ingested a wire would be nice, I've lost 2 USB cables to our Roomba so far.

And this guy would like his robot vacuum to detect when it's run over soft, pliable waste before it spreads it throughout the house:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/08/15/po...

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I have two dogs that shed and was hoping a robot vacuum cleaner would save us a ton of time. I also thought our house was ideal for a robot vacuum cleaner (all wood floors except some low-pile rugs) and my wife and I are very clean and consistent about picking up, but it turned out not to be the case. I bought a high-end robot vacuum (Neato D5) and used it every day for a week. It got stuck every time it cleaned, couldn't clean the whole house without a charge cycle, and I had to empty the bin on it at least two times per cleaning.

Other than the fact that it was unattended, the robot vacuum was significantly worse than a regular vacuum. So I'd say there's still a ton of room for improvement and innovation in the robot vacuum market.

I'm sure it depends on the dog's hair, our dogs shed short ~1/2 inch long white hairs that end up all over the place. The Roomba (some mid-range $300 unit) runs every other day (one day downstairs, the next day upstairs) and does a good job of getting the hair out of the carpet. The bin is always full of dog hair and lint.

It hasn't completely replaced the regular vacuum, but we can run it much less frequently (like every other week instead of every other day).

To be fair, the only advantage a robot vacuum has is that's it's unattended - it's pretty much a worse vacuum in every way than a regular one; limited range/time, poor suction, gets stuck, etc. The idea is that it will do a mediocre job of cleaning often enough that dirt doesn't build up.

Even with the issues, I feel like my Roomba is still a net gain, but it's not a slam-dunk.

Ignoring the need to vacuum the stairs themselves, in this situation, having a Roomba for upstairs and another for downstairs would solve a fair bit of that problem, rather than waiting 5+ years for a viable/affordable stair-climbing and vacuuming robot.

I was considering a Roomba but after reading this I've decided it's simply not an option because I own cats, and this is not a risk I'm willing to take.

If your cats regularly (or even irregularly) poop on the floor, then yeah, I wouldn't risk it. If it only happens in one area of the house, then you can set up a beacon to keep the roomba away.

It hasn't been a problem with our dogs.

They've pooped on the floor exactly once during a time when there was a lot of change and one of them was stressed out. I'm actually more concerned about regular old vomit or a hairball than poop, but even the possibility of cat poop spread all over is enough to turn me off to it.

I had three cats and an older refurb Roomba and it worked fine. One was a longhair and they all shed quite a bit.

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