New Floor Washing Robot From iRobot - Scooba 230

iRobot has just announced a new addition to it's Scooba floor cleaning robot line. The Scooba 230 is smaller in circumference but a bit taller from what I can gather. The smaller base allows it to maneuver into tighter corners such as around toilets, where it's really needed. I'm liking what I see from the 230 and it is time to replace my 1st generation Scooba...

New Floor Cleaning Robot To Take On iRobot's Scooba

If you've followed Great Big Geek for a while you'll know that I have a love for iRobot, in fact I own 2 Roomba vacuum cleaning robots and a Scooba floor mopping robot... they save me a lot of time and effort and do a great job in the process. From CES comes a new challenger to the robotic home appliance market - "Mint".

Mint is a sexy little robot from Evolution Robotics. The big differences seem to be:

1. It's shape, square vs. the iRobot round products;
2. The use of a Swiffer duster pad vs. iRobot's Clorox solution or vinegar; and
3. A systemic cleaning pattern vs. iRobot's wandering - multiple pass method.

If anyone at Evolution Robotics is listening.... I'd love to get my hands on one to do a comparison/review!

Check out the Cnet video from CES:

Tiny Robot Handles Tough Terrain

From the folks at iRobot comes a little device that deploys from your pocket and is capable of handling itself over rough terrain. I envision a mounted/embedded camera for surveillance, though the video makes no mention of it's intended uses.

Robotic Web Cam Video

WowWee is getting set to launch it's new ROVIO roving web cam this Friday. The little robot can be controlled via a web connection from anywhere you are. Equipped with LED lights for night time running, microphone, speakers, a self docking feature and in home gps, ROVIO looks to be an interesting little device. Roomba manufacturer iRobot is also preparing for a robotic web cam with the announcement of beta testing of it's ConnectR robot. The ROVIO will be available through Amazon and Hammacher Schlemmer. It will be interesting to see which company dominates this market, I'm inclined to favour the iRobot offering over that of a toy maker but then again I own a Roomba, a Scooba, and have offered my name to the ConnectR beta test so I may be a little biased. The ROVIO videos are quite impressive though...

iRobot Unveils New Roomba Models

In an e-mail to iRobot customers and fanboys, iRobot Corporation has announced 3 new Roomba models. The Roomba 532 and 562 Pet Series robots are dubbed as "Your new best friend in hairy situations" while the Roomba 610 Professional Series "Your new employee of the month". Both the Pet Series and the Professional Series appear to have all of the things we love about Roomba, only beefed up to handle heavy duty dirt. IRobot says this of the 610 "...designed to tackle large spaces and heavily trafficked areas." while the 562 is said to "...features the latest Roomba innovations plus special features to help tackle hairy situations." I've often wondered when iRobot would take the Roomba outside of the home and into commercial operations, now business owners can love Roomba as much as we love our trusty little robots at home!

Showing Roomba Some Love

If I could write a song or make a music video it would turn out exactly like this, except I can't sing or play an instrument, so maybe not exactly... but the sentiment would be the same!



Well done Mr. Pitiful! I love my Roomba this much as well. iRobot is feeling the love too, since the link was included in their Summer 2008 newsletter.

iRobot announces winner in the iRobot Create Challenge

The “Personal Home Robot” was announced today as the winner of iRobot's Create Challenge and it's creator Danh Trinh, 35, of Towson, Md., took home $5,000 for his efforts. The device can water plants, control lights and appliances, play music and remind owners to take medication. “This is an excellent example of the enthusiasm people bring to the idea of building robots,” said Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman, iRobot Corp. “Contestants put in amazing efforts creating exciting and imaginative robots for the challenge. We saw everything from robots that serve food and drinks to robots that paint pictures and can be remotely controlled from distant locations.” No mention was made of any intentions to market "Personal Home Robot" but I'd sure like to have a robot that could take care of the plants!

Robot love!

MSNBC has an interesting story about Roomba owners that appears to contradict a GigaOm post that I commented on recently. The article sites a report conducted by an associate professor at Georgia Tech, Beki Grinter. Here's an interesting quote "The third phase of the study, presented last week at the Ubiquitous Computing Conference in Austria, focused on more traditional users. Polling 379 U.S. users, it found that some would pre-clean their homes before using the machine, and that it seemed to make males more excited about the chore of vacuuming." Perhaps iRobot should market the little guys to women as a means of getting their man involved in the chores!

Frankenstein Complex and iRobot's future

Kevin Kelleher at GigaOm has a theory about stagnant sales at iRobot, and it's called the Frankenstein Complex. Isaac Asimov coined the phrase to describe the fear of robots and Kelleher thinks it explains why we North Americans have not embraced the machines in our homes like the Japanese have in theirs. In his post Kelleher says "The Burlington, Mass., company went public nearly two years ago and its share price has spent much of last year below the $24 offering price. Revenue from consumer products –60% of iRobot’s revenue last year – fell 1% in the first half of 2007 from a year ago."

My experience with robots is more in the software realm of chat robots, but I tend to agree that they can be seen as a little creepy by some. I have found that the more human looking, the creepier they get. I just don't think that we (collective) are afraid of the Roomba, it's probably more to do with the fact that they are not as easily obtained as say a Dyson, and also not really mass marketed. I'd venture a guess that most people have never heard of them! I'd love one, but until my old upright throws in the towel I'm not motivated enough to purchase. On the other hand, the ConnectR and perhaps even the Looj are both something that I don't already have, fill a gap that is not met by any other device, and therefore I might be convinced to purchase.

Interesting theory though.

iRobot unleashes two new robots

iRobot has added a couple of new home robots to it's line up of helpful little discs. The Looj, a remote controlled crawler, that was rumoured earlier this year, has been created to help clear your gutters of debris. More interesting though, is the ConnectR, a mobile VOIP speaker phone that you can control remotely over the web. iRobot's site says this about the ConnectR, "Combining the latest in Internet communications and robot technology, ConnectR lets you virtually visit with loved ones, relatives and pets anytime you wish – seeing, hearing and interacting with them in their home as if you were there in person." The Looj sells for $99.99 - $169.99 while ConnectR is not publicly available yet, but is expected to be in the $500.00 range and available late '07 or early '08. If you're interested in participating in a pilot program with ConnectR, iRobot is taking applications here. I signed up ;)

Business Week reviews the new Roomba

I couldn't resist a new robot story... While I don't own a Roomba, I've been obsessing about them ever since their release 4 years ago. With a new version of Roomba (500 Series) hitting floors everywhere today, Business Week has prepared a review. Four out of five stars from the reviewer, you can't please all of the people all of the time! I'll still dream about you Roomba, probably even more!

iRobot and Tazer team up to break laws of robotics

As if I need to remind you, iRobot famous for their Roomba vacuum cleaner robot and Scooba the floor mopping robot, takes its name from an Isaac Asimov's science fiction novel of the same name. In the book Asimov wrote the 3 laws of robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

So the question is, with iRobot's fitting of it's military robot (PackBot) with Taser International Inc.'s electric stun gun technology, does this battlefield marriage contradict the laws of the namesake? The Taser fitted PackBot is said to be remotely controlled by a human operator and therefore will not be enabled to decide who to target and when to fire it's weapon. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against giving the good guys the advantage and keeping police and/or military men and women out of harms way, I just find it a little ironic!

Human like robot - CB2

By now you may have already seen the news articles about CB2 the Japanese robot that was developed to mimic a child's movements between ages 1 and 3. The machine has 56 actuators that replace muscles and allow it to move in an immature yet human like fashion. While I have never worked in robotics, I've studied artificial intelligence and have developed Internet based chat robots which are often represented by avatars. One thing that I have noticed in my work, is that the more human looking the avatar the creepier it looks, and it's usually because of the eyes! Animated, cartoon like characters always seem to be more accepted than the photo-realistic ones. While CB2 was developed for the purpose of studying the movements of a child, I'm not sure why the researchers felt the need to give it such human like appearance. I love robotics and am considering a Roomba, though I think I'll wait until the new year when iRobot is said to be launching 3 new devices, I just hope they don't make the things look too human like! It's just unnatural looking no matter how hard they try, besides I want to know who is man and who is machine...