And that, dear readers, is how a robotic vacuum is supposed to work; none of this “random path” gos-se.
It has its flaws, and it is nowhere near perfect, but the Neato XV-21
(Of interesting note, one cannot see those red bars on its charge station normally – just black plastic. I guess that explains how the vacuum identifies it and knows where to go home.)
One of these days, I’m going to buy a Roomba, just so I can use it as a platform for a miniature Dalek….
I love the sudo random path that my roomba does, it does clean all of the floor, and it does a good job of it. Could i do better yes, but i love the fact that i just hit clean on my way out the door and the entire apartment gets vacuumed. because i tend to do it every day, even if it does not do as good of a job as i could with a normal canister vac overall i think it does a better job.
@ AuricTech: Yeah, these would not work for that either – the turret on top is for a laser rangfinder that lets it map the room.
Real Roombas would be just fine, and it would be hilarious to see a Dalek bouncing around a room
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@ dagamore: The Neato’s pretty much the same way. It lives with its butt plugged into its base station, and at 0800 every day, it wakes up, wanders out, vacuums what it can, goes back to its charge station if it needs to (it remembers it in its map), and then finishes up. It even remembers where it left off, and heads back there.
I would argue it takes less time and energy to get the same floorspace as a random-path-er would, but I honestly do not know.
And, no, it does not do as good as my Dyson – two days’ worth of vacuuming by the Neato upstairs on carpet left about a half a cup of stuff in the carpet – but it sure beats doing nothing
.
Now, if we can just teach either one of these things to make a sandwich…
If they can manage that, they can manage making more of themselves, and that would probably be… bad.
I know I’m late to the party on this post, but I just found your site. Can I ask how often you have to clean it out? I also have a Dyson, and a dog, and a 1BR apartment, and a once-a-week vacuuming is about 1/3 a Dyson canister. I’m concerned that emptying this thing out would become more of a chore than simply vacuuming.
So it really depends on how often you run it. We have two cats that live in our basement, and then our living room, kitchen, dining room, foyer, and a bathroom on the main floor above them, with hardwood floors throughout – less than 1k sqft, total. If I do not run the Neato for a week, and run it on the main floor, it will have a solid brick of cat fur and dust in its bin by the time it is done (possibly before). If I run it every day like I am supposed to, it can probably get away with running for three days before you really have to empty it, and emptying consists of grabbing that orange handle on top of the device, pulling out a filter, and dumping the bin – not too hard.
My biggest grief with the Neato so far is that it occasionally gets lost/stuck and gives up, but stays on. By the time we get back home from work, its battery will have completely drained, and it will have lost its internal clock and vacuuming schedule, and its interface is not exactly the easiest thing to use. Now I just hit the big orange button on my way out the door.
It is not a Dyson, and will never replace your Dyson, but after running it around our carpeted upstairs, our Dyson only picked up maybe a cup of dust/dirt (uncompacted), and that was after not vacuuming upstairs for about three weeks.
I love being able to set it down in a room, push the button, go do something else for half an hour, and come back to a vacuumed room. The few minutes necessary to cart it about and empty it out pale in comparison to actually vacuuming
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