Robotic Vacuum Cleaners.

 

Definitely an "Off Topic" discussion!

Have any factory members invested in a robotic vacuum cleaner? I recently got an iRobot Roomba S9+. I've had it for about a month now and so far I am pretty impressed. It was kind of a hassle "training" it. I had to declutter the house and remove as much movable furniture as possible so it could move around freely and learn the floor plan of each of the two levels in my house. It took a couple of hours on each level to poke around and create a map of the floor plan in the app. It came up with a surprisingly accurate map of each floor of my house. Once the floor plan map is done you can edit it to draw virtual wall and door dividers to separate and name the individual rooms. You can also draw in specific rectangular "zones" for areas to avoid or areas that require special cleaning. You can then define specific jobs to clean a single room or several rooms in a given sequence.

The robot did a remarkably good job of vacuuming, much better than I expected. It certainly isn't as powerful as an upright vacuum, but it gets into places that you just can't get to with an upright ... like under the beds.

It is kind of fun to watch the robot vacuum. It makes parallel passes in the open areas. When it bumps into a wall or piece of furniture, it pokes around it until it finds its way around it. Once it has vacuumed as much of the open area as it can, it "looks around" and figures out what little nooks and crannies it missed then goes to each of them to complete the room. Then in a final pass around the room it goes along each edge (wall and furniture pieces), to clean as close to the edges as it can. It actually has a little rotating edge brush to pull out lint caught along the mop boards and other edges.

As it is vacuuming, if its rather small dirt bin gets full, it marches itself back to the "home base" and empties itself into a larger bag contained in the docking station, then goes back to resume cleaning where it left off. Likewise, if the battery runs low, it goes back to the docking station and recharges. When it has sufficient charge, it will automatically continue the cleaning job.

It does a surprisingly good job of vacuuming. We had recently hired a cleaning crew to clean our home and of course they used powerful commercial grade equipment. Yet the little Roomba found a lot of dirt they missed, and seemed to be very good at picking up cat hair from our cats that the commercial vacuums left behind. I am sure some of this came from under the beds, but it even picked up a lot of cat hair out of the carpet in the open areas of the rooms.

There are some quirky things I am learning about how to best use a robotic vacuum cleaner. So far I have had no problems with it getting stuck, getting lost, falling down the stairs, etc.

I would be interested to hear the experiences of other Factory members that use a robotic vacuum in their homes.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

I finally got one that is

I finally got one that is the same as yours. Two previous were manual empty Roombas, first one I bought that my Grandson would not leave alone so it got to the state were it just wondered around aimlessly maybe picking stuff up. The second one was given to the grandson on his 5th birthday by friends of ours who were upgrading their Roomba, it didn't last long. The new one I told the kid in no uncertain terms, leave it alone, so far so good. I have it set for Monday, Wednesday and Friday when he is at school. We have 2 dogs a cat, 3 Grandkids and Parents living with us. Very happy so far.

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All the worlds indeed a stage and we are merely players. Rush

Roomba.

One annoying thing I found is that the Roomba avoids about a 3 foot radius around the docking station. It seems like that is something they could improve in the software as it is able to vacuum right along the edge of other obstacles. I know it uses IR to find its docking station and park and will not enter that IR zone while vacuuming. But like I said, it is annoying that this half circle never gets vacuumed. I have come up with a work around, but it takes some intervention.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Well

The wife and I got my stepdaughter one for Xmas last year. She likes it because she has wodden floors.

But it drives her 2 cats nuts. They chase after it like it's some kind of critter they need to kill or play with.

And it's not completely silent when it's moving, so I suspect that's what gets the cats going.

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I never get lost, but I do explore new territory every now and then.

Cats.

Interesting. My two cats show some curiosity when the roomba is running and sometimes follow it around for a time. But most of the time they just ignore it. They are 3 years old, so out of that playful kitten stage.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Interesting

My sister in law has one but it drives her dog crazy. He attacks the thing and eventually manages to flip it over like a stranded turtle smile

Some funny YouTube Roomba pet video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4YMsjkeR1s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdYrL1FwPDw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTAm2ep42Pc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzLhVZs0POM

I looked at one a couple of years ago and decided it wouldn't work for our very irregularly shaped rooms. Looks like they made some improvements since then though. I'll have to look at them again.

Roomba.

Based on my limited experience with them, the higher-end roomba's like the S9+ that I got are pretty effective at mapping your floor plan and navigating through the maze. Once they know your floor plan, they are quite methodical and predictable in cleaning any given room or area. I am not sure what kinds of sensors they must have to get their bearings and navigate; I am guessing magnetic compass, gyroscope, along with the cameras and IR sensor, and counting wheel revolutions to measure distance. My house is not square with the world (as far as true north), with the front facing NE. I wondered how the robot would wander around while it was learning the floor plan. At first it seemed a little random, but it soon seemed to figure out the orientation of the house and established a methodology for searching. It was interesting to watch it when it went through a door and entered a new room while mapping. It would go in the new room a few feet, then rotate around like it was looking to see what kind of area it was in, then it would go back out the door and continue working on the room or hallway it had been in. Later, it would return to the new room to do a thorough search of that area. It seemed to me like it must have some pretty sophisticated programming to do what it did.

Another thing that kind of intrigues me is how it knows where it is if you take it out of its docking station, carry it to another place in the house, then ask it to clean a specific room or area. It does not take long for it to figure out where it is in the house and navigate to the place where you directed it to clean. Of course it can't navigate up or down steps, so if you ask it to clean an area on a different floor than it is on, it is smart enough to figure out that it can't navigate to that spot and will give a message like "path blocked" or some such thing.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

The A-B test can be misleading

alandb wrote:

It does a surprisingly good job of vacuuming. We had recently hired a cleaning crew to clean our home and of course they used powerful commercial grade equipment. Yet the little Roomba found a lot of dirt they missed, and seemed to be very good at picking up cat hair from our cats that the commercial vacuums left behind. I am sure some of this came from under the beds, but it even picked up a lot of cat hair out of the carpet in the open areas of the rooms.

I realize your main point here is that the Roomba is better at vacuuming than one might expect, but this comparison is an old door-to-door salesman trick. "First you vacuum with your vacuum cleaner. Now I'll vacuum the exact same area with mine. See? Look at all the dirt yours missed."

Unless you test it the other way around, too, robot vacuum first, commercial outfit second, results may be misleading. Chances are going over the same area with any vacuum cleaner will get dirt the first one missed. Also vacuuming spreads dust into the air which settles, especially if there isn't a really good HEPA filter on the vacuum cleaner. It also kicks some debris into areas already vacuumed, if brushes are operating in the roller. The multiple passes in different directions and more time vacuuming may be key to the robot vacuum's apparent extra success over the commercial outfit.

We recently got a new upright, a Shark AC-powered, manual push bagless vacuum cleaner, which I really like. (We have three high-strung dogs that would be as tortured as some of the cats above and way too much furniture for a robot vac). The key to really good results with the Shark is that it has an LED light near the floor. Vacuum with rooms otherwise dark, multiple passes, multiple directions, and you see and get every crumb that you would miss with one or two passes without that light, and I do see a lot of leftover debris after one pass. Taking a lot of time to carefully do the job right is important. That's one advantage a robot vac has over most human operators, even pros for whom time is money: more patience and dedication to the job for the robot.

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"141 could draw faster than he, but Irving was looking for 143..."

Dirt.

Your point is well taken about the salesman trick. And just like using a traditional vacuum cleaner, with the robot vacuum, the more you declutter and move furniture out of the way, the more effective your vacuuming job will be. I am finding that the robots dirt bin does not fill as quickly as it did the first couple of times I used it, so that makes me think it is finding less dirt. The explanation for that though is probably because we are vacuuming more often with the robot than we did with our upright. Our Eureka upright has a conventional bristle brush beater roller where the roomba has rubber roller brushes. I would guess the bristles can pick up more and do a better job overall, but somehow the rubber rollers seem to do a better job with pet hair and hair in general as it does not tend get tangled and stuck in the rubber rollers. The bristles and stronger suction of the upright definitely do a better job of fluffing up the carpet nap than the roomba.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Roomba

I found the same problem with teh area aroutn the docking station. I have an older model that does not map or self-empty. It worked well when it was new (it is about 2 years old) but now the battery does not last and it does not redock with thh battery is low so I have to search for it when I get home from work. If I get another, I will get a self-mapping one. I am looking at a Shark model, rather than the Roomba.

We have one

I think this is our 2nd one. The first one we tried had a really difficult time with the pet hair, which was the main reason we picked it up, to get the pet hair under the couch and difficult to reach places. This one has rubber on the roller and seems to do better. We clean the roller after each use, but much better than hauling around a large machine and moving furniture. We put down 2x4's to keep it out of rooms we don't want it to get stuck in. I recall it stranding itself on top of the bath scale at least once.
We don't have it set to auto start because I have a friend who learned a hard lesson on that for us. She had two older mini schnauzers, one became ill and went diarrhea in the house while she was at an appointment. She got home and Roomba had drug that all over the house. Definitely not a shop vac! She had to have professionals come and clean the main floor of her home!

~Angela

Unattended vacuuming.

I have not allowed my roomba to operate unattended, and your story is a good one to keep in mind. My cats are pretty reliable with the litter box, but you never know when one is going to barf something up. Since I am retired, I really have no reason to schedule the roomba to run unattended.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

P.O.O.P Guarantee

GlobeTurtle wrote:

I think this is our 2nd one...
We don't have it set to auto start because I have a friend who learned a hard lesson on that for us. She had two older mini schnauzers, one became ill and went diarrhea in the house while she was at an appointment. She got home and Roomba had drug that all over the house. Definitely not a shop vac! She had to have professionals come and clean the main floor of her home!

~Angela

There are some newer upgrade models that are programmed to avoid piles of dog poop, including one with a "P.O.O.P Guarantee," though whether they will recognize and avoid diarrhea is another question:
https://www.cbsnews.com/essentials/irobot-roomba-j7-robot-va...

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"141 could draw faster than he, but Irving was looking for 143..."

Good to know!

Lost Anyway wrote:
GlobeTurtle wrote:

I think this is our 2nd one...
We don't have it set to auto start because I have a friend who learned a hard lesson on that for us. She had two older mini schnauzers, one became ill and went diarrhea in the house while she was at an appointment. She got home and Roomba had drug that all over the house. Definitely not a shop vac! She had to have professionals come and clean the main floor of her home!

~Angela

There are some newer upgrade models that are programmed to avoid piles of dog poop, including one with a "P.O.O.P Guarantee," though whether they will recognize and avoid diarrhea is another question:
https://www.cbsnews.com/essentials/irobot-roomba-j7-robot-va...

Unexpected roomba activation.

I did read a story about a pet or child accidentally starting the roomba in a "clean everything" mode which is the default operation of the "Clean" button on top of the Roomba. So it would be relatively easy for a pet to step on this button and unexpectedly start the machine without the owner knowing about it. The button can be disabled in the app, so that is what I have done to avoid this problem.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Good idea

de=activating the button

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TomTom built in and Garmin Nuvi 1490T. Eastern Iowa, formerly Southern California "You can check out any time you like...but you can never leave."

roomba button

Yeah, I always use the app to control the roomba, so to me the button is more of an annoyance than a feature. Before I disabled it, I did accidentally start the vacuum a couple of times when I picked it up to move it to the other level in my house. Now if I accidentally touch the button, it just announces "Clean button disabled, use the app to re-enable".

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon

Not A Positive Experience

We have one, but our house has oriental carpets and it gets stuck on the edges which creates possible damage. Also gets stuck on HVAC floor registers. I built little frames for them to bump against. Set up time, a waste of time.

The IR barriers that we bought are not laser beam accurate. They produce a cone shaped beam apparently and it is difficult to get them accurate.

I think our house is just too complex for it. I must admit that our unit is a few years old, but at the cost, I am reluctant to risk the $$$ that they are that much better today.

We also had the one that mops the kitchen floor, but it left the grout seams full of dirty water. Gave it away to my nephew whose floor had flat seams. Not sure he even tried it.

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rvOutrider

Dust mop

My house has "luxury vinyl" flooring. I simply push around a wide dustmop. A Roomba might be useful if the flooring was different material.

Roomba

The Roomba does a good job of sweeping hard floors too, like tile, vinyl, wood, laminate, etc. It is kind of noisy though when sweeping my tile floors.

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Alan - Android Auto, DriveLuxe 51LMT-S, DriveLuxe 50LMTHD, Nuvi 3597LMTHD, Oregon 550T, Nuvi 855, Nuvi 755T, Lowrance Endura Sierra, Bosch Nyon