30 Years of iRobot
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This is a super interesting insight for when you're building consumer products. When you make something super-easy to do, expect usage to 10x or even 100x. I've seen high-unit economics consumer products build with cost estimates that assume an average user doing task X once a month. If we make it possible to do the task with a free app, even though it costs us $Y to do this, our total monthly cost per user is $Y. These estimates then get blown out the water when users start doing the task 10 times a month.
I just use a broom these days.
They were really excited to use it. We put beacons all around the house and then activated the Roomba on the hardwood floor near an obvious pile of dust in the middle of the living room. I figured that would be the Hello World test.
After about 10 minutes of watching it randomly bump into walls, get jammed under the couch, we started to get disappointed. But then it made a direct path towards the dust. We all got excited and then watched it simply go right over the dust without picking up anything. At that point I picked up the unit and kept restarting it over and over until it would pick up the dust.
We tried it on maybe two other occasions and it would just continuously get stuck within a few minutes (usually either between piano legs or under furniture that was raised about the same height as the vacuum). They re-gifted it back to me where it sat unused until I finally gave it away for free. That was well over a decade ago and I now realize that I had unrealistic expectations and possibly didn't give it a fair chance.
Have they improved much since then? My home has lots of hardwood floors throughout and I vacuum daily. Even though there's central vac access everywhere I prefer to use a Miele canister vacuum.
We bring out the regular Miele vacuum once every week or two to get to the spots that Roborock can not reach.
The only issue I have at the moment is that I am working from home and vacuuming takes a lot of time for these robots compared to using a regular vacuum.
Sounds like it. We have one basic model. It also seems to stumble around rather randomly, but it doesn't, there is a movement patterns that makes it pass everywhere given enough time. It does not clean much with each pass, but it does not pass once. If you had let it run it would have cleaned the dust eventually.
> it would just continuously get stuck within a few minutes (usually either between piano legs or under furniture that was raised about the same height as the vacuum)
Mine gets stuck at the feed of an ikea chair. That's annoying and the only solution I have is to turn the chair around or to put it away. It's likely you have to prepare the space a bit before turning it on, but that's still a lot less work and time than doing everything manually.
> My home has lots of hardwood floors throughout and I vacuum daily.
Definitely buy one and stop wasting your time vacuuming :)
I’ve really stopped using mine for the most part, the continuous overhead of babysitting the roomba is more work than just vacuuming once a week with the cordless vacuum.
Legitimately, I could see people being super into that. They have to care for the Roomba by making sure it doesn't freak out because of shoelaces or the cliff you describe. Maybe it beeps and whistles.
- We have 3 kids, and you would think that would be a hostile Roomba environment but instead, it motivates them to keep the toys off the floor e.g. Legos. Sometimes we say “Better clean up your stuff or else Roomba’s gonna get it!” - We only buy rugs that are Roomba compatible - Our house is just one story with wood floors in every room which is also lucky and helpful - Another positive is Roomba is much better than a vacuum in terms of getting under sofas and beds.
However, I agree with you on having to babysit Roomba. Roomba still gets stuck in random places - wedged underneath certain pieces of furniture. Sometimes it goes into a bathroom and somehow manages to close the door on itself. Sometimes there will be an obvious mess - small pile of dirt tracked in by the kids - Roomba will vacuum for 1 hour and travel all around the dirt and still miss it.
It’s also loud - not as loud as a regular vacuum cleaner but pretty close. And considering that I can vacuum my entire house in about 15 minutes and Roomba does an equivalent job in 3 hours (3 x 1 hour sessions)...
Bottom line is that we still use Roomba. But we also still use a vacuum once every 2-3 weeks or so.
(Separately I'm a bit surprised that they consider once a week vacuuming to be expected. I personally prefer once every 3 days. Wonder if I'm a bit OCD).
The product that I use right now, the i7+ (bought a 960 first and returned it) has been pretty fantastic. It feels like an actual smart automatic cleaning system that takes care of my place and cleans itself with the station that came with it.
Tech wise - other products use Lidar so they can run in the dark and create the map much faster and more accurately than vSlam that my Roomba uses, so that'd be a nice thing to have but I don't really run it in the dark anyway.
The Roomba exceeded my expectations so much that I went and bought their cheapest dumb mopping robot, the Braava 240 and even though it doesn't have smart navigation or maps, it's great. Just fill it up, put it in the corner, press start and it'll mop everywhere.
In total I spent a lot more money than I wanted to spend but my place has never been cleaner. No more cat hair or dust bunnies flying around, no crumbs in my carpet, I sneeze much less, everything gets mopped regularly, and for the roomba all I have to do is change the dust bag in the station once in a while (besides occasional cleaning of parts). If either of them breaks I would without hesitation re-buy them.
I'm excited to see what they'll come up with next, but I also hope they won't get left behind with innovation and tech. The others (esp Roborock) iterate much faster, cost less and pack more features that often get rolled out to their older robots as well (no-go zones for example. iRobot didn't add them to their older camera-based robots like the 960 and kept them for i7 and higher)
IIRC that one is based on the Mint floor cleaner they bought several years ago, and does actually do basic mapping, using wheel rotations to measure distance instead of something like lidar.
(I have one of the original Mints from before iRobot bought them, though I've not really used it since getting a Neato)
Is that something common? Never seen that, never heard of it, had to google to find out what it is. Maybe that's more of an US(?) thing and too specific?
[1] https://store.irobot.com/en_US/create-programmable-programma...
A lot of general info about this is collected in the documentation for a particular library that uses it: https://www.neilvandyke.org/racket/roomba/
I wrote this library when I found a Roomba 400 in a Goodwill thrift store for $20. When, if living in the future of having your own robot vacuum cleaner was not cool enough, hey, what's this mini-DIN connector for... :)
(Also on the topic of liking iRobot: That same $20 Roomba was also the first time I met an iRobot person. I eventually bought a used 530, and was giving the 400 to a friend. Since I owned robots but not a car, I strapped the Roomba's retail box to my trusty little luggage cart, to meet my friend for lunch. Afterwards, as we're walking along the dirt path along a bank of the Charles River near Harvard Square, rolling the Roomba behind us, this jogger comes running along, and then stops. Turns out she worked for iRobot, was super-nice, and was tickled to see a vintage Roomba in nature.)
I don't want to buy the most expensive and then keep exchanging down to the simplest one that works.
Seriously, I don't know anyone who has this implemented across most of their house. They get one as a gift or experiment, and maybes it works.
I'd love to have these all over my house doing the work, but I have no idea what that actually requires.
But you also mention having them "all over [your] house." In that case, I'd recommend the i7 or s9. I've got the i7 and I think it's fantastic.
There are a few factors to consider, but it's not complicated. Do you have mostly carpet or hard flooring? Any kids or pets? Do you want it to clean the whole house or just one room?
ps. newer models of irobot are exploring the lidar space
pss. military applications are under a different irobot spin out/brand.
It's not the smartest Roomba ever (it bumps around a lot to learn its environment--I don't think its sensor suite is that advanced) but it does the job just fine. I just let it run while I'm working.
There's a psychological benefit to having clean floors, especially when one is home a lot these days.
They are good for lazy surface cleaning but given the form factor, they’ll never have the cleaning power of the Dyson.
But the kitchen/dining area also has cords, chairs, and (under normal circumstances) various things being packed/unpacked in various corners. My compromise a couple years ago was to get a Dyson which is super-quick to whip out and spend a few minutes doing a rough vacuum. MUCH easier than to haul out my old canister vac. And probably less effort than keeping things iRobot ready and emptying it.
I have both kids and a dog, so the daily cleaning my Roomba does is a game changer. No more piles of fur or crumbs accumulating in the corners. I have to empty the bin every other day, but it takes me less time to do that than it would to manually vacuum the main traffic areas in the house once or twice a week.
Personally, I like the fact that the Roomba forces me to keep wires and other stuff of the floor. I think it makes my house appear less cluttered overall, but it's a matter of opinion.
I actually have a cordless Dyson too, which I think complements the Roomba well. I use it to occasionally deep clean a couple of area rugs.
Since buying the roomba I've not used the real vacuum cleaner at all, although I still mop the floors once every 7-10 days which is mostly necessary because of the child we have running around the place.
If you can afford it and are willing to spend the money, the robot vacuum and handheld combination @malandrew mentioned is a pairing that has worked for our house for the past few years now.
The website told me "e series", "600 series", "i series", "s series", "900 series" - then even though they are called "series", most of them have only one product in them.
I wanted something mid-range to get started and the product picker tool they have recommended me the e5 because I have a pet. I went through dozens of reviews to finally learn that it doesn't have a camera and vSlam, so it just slams into everything and doesn't map my place over time.
I went with the next higher model that has a camera, the 960 and it has been doing a good job. As a techie I was a bit disappointed that I picked a model from 2016 and that they kept the smarter features like keep-out zones for the higher ones. Eventually returned it and got an i7 for a similar price and it's a pretty fantastic product, though I ended up paying much more for my experiment than I anticipated...
The product comparison page ([0]) is doing an ok job but I wish they'd make product selection a bit easier.
It's terrible when you have a pet -- the e5 gets full, doesn't realize it, and just keeps dragging hair balls around the house until you stop it.
But honestly, actual needs are going vary by what your house is like, who lives in it, how they live, and what their standards are. And on how your habits and preferences adjust as you get used to what they can do for you.
At the end of the day, none of these are as good as manual vacuuming. But they're way better than not vacuuming. I'm sure it's frustrating to have to just try one and see, but I honestly don't think there's a better approach.
You can do that in O(log n) number of steps if you start with a mid-tier model and binary-search through their product line :).
Personally I don't want a robot that depends on WiFi mostly because I don't trust that their backend services will keep running for years as they release 8 newer models and want to clean up their codebase. Security is another issue but since their vacuums don't have cameras putting it on an untrused network mostly solves that problem.
> or maybe even gather them in a central place? No.
The appropriate XKCD for that is maybe https://xkcd.com/1425/
There’s also a bug where any high contrast rug, like any light rug with a stripe or pattern, confuses the stair sensors so roomba thinks it’s “stuck on a cliff”. There’s no way to turn this off even if you promise the roomba that you live in a one-story apartment. So on days that I want to run the roomba, not only do I need to tidy up first but need to fold up the rug and make sure it’s off the floor.
Maybe in my household we’re just messier than average, but the roomba is certainly not a set it and forget it kind of device. I also have a cordless vacuum and I’ve gone back to just manually vacuuming once a week, the roomba might still save a bit of time over all but the mental overhead of babysitting it is ultimately not really worth it for me.
On occasion, I'll manually run it in other rooms after picking up the toys/clothes/unicorns/mermaids/fairies/and rainbows.