In a press release today, iRobot Corporation (listed on the NASDAQ as IRBT) announced that they had passed the sales milestone of five million home robots. Five million! That’s a lot of robot vacuums. iRobot has been selling Roombas since 2002.
“This achievement represents a huge milestone for iRobot and for the robotics industry as a whole,” said Colin Angle, chairman and chief executive officer of iRobot. “We set out to create practical robots that help people accomplish tasks they don’t like to do, and in many cases, don’t have time to do. With over five million home robots sold, we have seen a widespread acceptance of this technology. This further fuels our drive to innovate and provide solutions that make a difference in people’s lives.”
The press release goes on to detail the achievements of the company and features of the robots which have propelled the popularity of its robot vacuum cleaners. Some of the features they talk about in the press release include:
The behavioral algorithms which make the robots clean floors more effectively.
Technology for detecting obstacles before the Roomba runs into them.
The low profile of the Roomba, which makes it ideal for vacuuming under furniture.
Dirt Detect: The robots sense dirt and change their behavior to spend more time in dirty areas.
Anti-tangle technology, which keeps the robot vacuums from getting caught on cables and fringes on rugs.
The spinning side brush.
Scheduling: So that you can have the robot clean your house when you’re not home.
Cliff detection to keep the vacuum cleaners from falling down stairs.
Automatic surface adjustment so that the robots can transition between different floor surfaces.
Round shape: Here’s one I haven’t thought about. iRobot says that the round shape of the Roombas helps keep them from getting stuck.
Home base with charger.
The press release goes on to detail the price range of Roombas, emphasizing that the entry-level robot is around US $129, and also mentions some of iRobot’s other robots for cleaning around the house. So the Scooba, Dirt Dog, Looj, and Verro. Here’s a link to the official press release on iRobot’s site.
iRobot’s Roomba 400 Series is the entry-level vacuum cleaning robot. While this unit is their most basic, and lacks some of the more advanced features of the newer robots, the 400 Series is still great at cleaning your floors. Here’s a list of the included features of the Roomba 400 vacuum:
Covered by a One Year Warranty
Battery Charger
Rechargeable Battery
Cleaning Tool
Vacuuming Debris Bin
Owner’s Guide and Documentation
The Roombas are designed to handle that most boring of household chores, sweeping your floors. All you have to do is carry the robot to the middle of your room and press the “clean” button in the center of the top of the robot. These vacuum cleaners automatically adjust their height to any floor surface, be it rugs, tile, carpeting, linoleum, or wood flooring. This assures that your floors get as clean as possible. Roombas are designed to figure out how large a room is and then adjust their vacuuming time to make sure that it covers the entire floor. Also built into the iRobot vacuums are sensors to keep the robot from falling down stairs and to sense when it bumps into things. This way it can safely navigate around your room and vacuum.
All of the iRobot Roomba vacuums use a three-stage cleaning system. A spinning brush on the left hand side of the vacuum scoops dirt and debris from hard to reach places like overhangs and corners. On the bottom of the vacuum are counter-rotating brushes that grab larger bits of debris, hair, pieces of grass or leaves, and of course dirt. Finally, the robot has a vacuum to suck up smaller pieces of dirt and dust.
This is admittedly old news, but it’s definitely cool enough to post here. Among the many products they create, iRobot has a robotics platform for eduction and tinkering that is called the iRobot Create. See here for a thorough review of this item and a page of different projects they have done internally with the iRobot Create. Among these projects is an amazingly amusing hamster-guided Roomba vacuum cleaner.
It’s hard to make out the mechanism they’re using on this robot project, but it looks like the ball is on some rollers. The rollers are probably hooked up to an optical encoding system, a lot like how the old fashioned computer mice with the balls worked. The Roomba is programmed to adjust its speed and direction to match that of the hamster.
Now all they have to do is figure out how to train the hamster to vacuum the most dirty parts of your floor. Maybe there would be some way to train the hamster to follow your shedding pets or messy kid around the house. Either way, I find it fascinating and amusing at the same time.
