Roomba 560 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
June 16th, 2008 Posted in technologyAfter seeing an Engadget article about a Roomba Pacman hack I was fascinated by the idea of a robot vacuum.
Being skeptical; I searched for reviews and the Wikipedia page for the Roomba for more information about how well these things actually clean. I found lots of praising videos on youtube , which combined with the information on Wikipedia that the 560 is the fifth generation of Roomba convinced me to order one.
A few things to note about the Roomba 560:
- has IR sensors in the front bumper which allow it to slow down before bumping into any furniture.
- carefully navigates around the top of stairs without falling down them (not shown in the video).
- has an on-board scheduler and auto docking system so that it can clean and then recharge itself on a programmed basis without any interaction.
- will clean for about 60 minutes each cleaning cycle.
- using the included lighthouses you can block it from entering a certain room, or set it to clean one room fully before automatically going to clean the next room.
My Roomba arrived this morning. Below is a video of a quick run around my living room and entrance hall, at the end of the video I cut the cleaning cycle short to demonstrate the auto docking system.
You may also download a high quality .wmv version of the video here (147MB).