Tarkblog

My daily routine involves going to the gym, going to work, making the coffee, and a few other odds and ends that I won’t share. A few months ago, upon suggestion of one Mr. Benjaminj Marjsonj I also started my day off with a perusal at woot.

Since then, I’ve been addicted to their antics and products. And last week, with coordination with my wife and with an ultra-low woot based price, we bought a Roomba.

It arrived yesterday, so I took it out of the box and put it on the charger. I anticipated great things today with the Roomba (yet to be named…if naming a robot is something you’re supposed to do).

I put the Roomba and its “home base” charger in the corner of our mostly unused Red room (which will later become our new kitchen). There it charged. The book said the initial charge is around 16 hours. That’s a long time.

When I got home tonight, I noticed it was charged.

So I decided to tell it to clean, and see what happened.

It made a few beeps, then backed off its base. It then proceeded to maneuver itself about the red room in a very random and bumpy fashion. It gave me every reminder that it didn’t have a clue about what it was doing, but it was going to keep on going as long as it could. If it was an intelligent robot, it was a toddler intelligent robot.

During its random cleaning and bumping abouts, it made its way through the doorway and into the yellow living room. This is where it met the cat, whom it completely ignored. The cat, however, did not ignore it. Instead it walked all around trying to figure this bugger out.

The Roomba continued to move all around the living room, running over many of the same places it had just been. The cat did his best to stay out of the way of it, though he never really quite figured it out.

After about 60 minutes of running about in both of the rooms, I turned it off and brought it back to home base. I’m not sure if it automatically finds its way back or not, but if you put it close to home base and push some buttons on top it climbs back on and recharges itself.

Afterwards, I opened the pan that contains the stuff it swept up…and it was full of gunk. Oh my, for having just swept recently and not really having dirty carpets, this dude picked up a lot of stuff.

Also, it did a very good job of going around obstacles. For flat surfaces like a wall, it would bump off of and turn 90 degrees and run right along side. For things like the coffee table edges, it would bump off of and cycle completely around the edges making 0-turn radius maneuvers. Quite impressive.

The thing had some trouble on a couple of thresholds, like around the fireplace and in the front entry way when the carpet turned to a harder surface. But, it raises its legs up and just tries harder, or forces itself backwards. It’s very persistent to try and get out of a bad situation. It only failed once, when it managed to wedge itself under a cedar chest. When I rescued it, it was still trying to find its way out.

So far, I’m pretty impressed. If I can just let this thing go sweep daily and keep the house generally clean, I’m happy. I can take it upstairs and just let it work. It had a couple of different cleaning modes, and it supposedly learns the layouts of the rooms it goes into so it gets smarter.

I hope to report back after some longer term usage. But thus far, Roomba, I heart you.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 7th, 2006 at 7:18 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.