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Roomba - The Robot vacuum cleaner experience

What is that thing?

Roomba 560 from iRobot is a vacuumcleaning robot.

roomba_running.jpg
Here it is seen running.

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And here it is seen “sleeping” in its docking station. The orange light shows that it is recharging its battery.

Cleaning of the cleaning robot

cleaning.jpg
Roomba takes up a little of your time now and then, when it is time to clean it.
Most of its joints can be disassembled, so hair and dust can be removed.
This cleaning process is the only “user time” needed to run Roomba. It takes approximately 15 minutes 2-3 times a week to do it.

Carpets

carpet.jpgcarpet_folded.jpg
The Roomba has a tendency to fold carpets. This however is not a problem, since it can unfold them again, when cleaning from the opposite direction.

Wires

floor_lamp.jpg
Wires on the floor seem to be a bit of a problem. Roomba winds up in them, and tends to drag them along with it, worst case, making things drop to the floor. This problem calls for rather untraditional solutions, as the one shown above, where the wire to a floorlamp has been taped onto the pole, thus running in mid air.

Mattes

front_door_matte.jpgterasse_matte.jpg
Doormattes usually come in dark grey or black colours. This is a problem to Roomba, since its cliffsensors works by sending light onto the surface on which it is running, and interpreting on the reflection. A black matte therefore makes Roomba think it is about to dive off cliff.
To solve this mattes in lighter grey can be used.
Another matte problem shows itself, when the matte is a lightweight matte (non rubber). Here Roomba tends to push the matte around, instead of vacuuming it. We hava solved this problem by sticking the matte to the floorboards using tesafix.
The above image to the left illustrates our front door matte, which has a light enough shade of grey for Roomba to work with. The right one shows our sticky mattes.

Furniture

sofa.jpgkommode.jpg
Some furnitures has legs not exactly high enough for Roomba to run under. This can easily be solved, using leg extensions

lighthouse.jpg
stone.jpg

Timetable 16/11-2007 17/11-2007 Average
Livingroom 11:08 (42m) 14:04 (41m) 41,5m
Hallway/kitchen 11:50 (47m) 14:45 (35m) 41m
Bedroom 12:37 (41m) 15:20 (52m) 46,5m
Finished 13:18 (2m) 16:12 (1m) 1,5m
Dock 13:20 16:13
roomba/roomba.1195312486.txt.gz · Last modified: 2007/11/17 16:14 by deva