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Roomba Day One
May. 27th, 2007 09:21 pmI picked up the new Roomba today, and got to play with it a little bit. I've read about how they work enough that I haven't bothered to look at the remote or the nifty virtual walls that allow you to restrict the Roomba's movements, I just played a bit with Roomba itself. (Himself?)
First, the living room. We were sitting around with Tyler and the room was cluttered, but it did pretty well. Note to self: fix the cords that are on the floor and get them safely out of the way for future. We had to go, so no full cleaning or anything. Roomba already showed strong intelligence though, going right under the couch and staying there for a while.
It can change floor types pretty easily, even at a minor height change, so it found its way into the kitchen, and then the foyer, quite easily. It couldn't get from the foyer to the living room though -- our divider is a stone piece that's over 1cm above the floor, which triggers the bumper.
(The bumper cushions the impact when Roomba hits something, and also triggers the "turn and try something different" instruction. They're actually quite complicated in the way they handle obstacles, judging by the neat shape-following I saw today. I'd love to get a look at the high-level design of the software.)
Later, I decided it was time for a challenge. As mentioned previously, the basement in our house is quite messy, and has fun features that will continue to generate mess even after thorough cleaning, such as the cat littler and the crumbling concrete in a few spots. I let it go to town down there for as long as it wanted, since there was nothing dangerous and very little clutter. I stopped it once to clean out the dirt collector, but otherwise it just puttered away for about an hour, then with a "ta-daa" (in beeping form) it was done. The basement is pretty good -- not 100%, but certainly 90%+. I wouldn't have been willing to spend the time required to get that far today, due to other commitments, so we're definitely ahead.
The cats are not fans of the Roomba of course, but they watched from halfway up the stairs where they were in a safe position of power over this weird noisy thing in their house. No pouncing, but a little bit of plaintive stares, as if to say, "Oh my god, human, we just got over that damned dog you brought over last week. Seriously, what did we do?"
The previous owner who auctioned it had a friendly fully-grown German Shepherd Dog (or Alsatian) that was afraid of it, so it had to go. Ha!
Noise levels: not enough to be a bother, but definitely noisy. Compared to a full-size vacuum it's quite quiet, but compared to relaxing with a book it's very loud. So I think we'll just run it when we leave to go somewhere, that way the cats can run around with it and we don't have to listen to it.
First, the living room. We were sitting around with Tyler and the room was cluttered, but it did pretty well. Note to self: fix the cords that are on the floor and get them safely out of the way for future. We had to go, so no full cleaning or anything. Roomba already showed strong intelligence though, going right under the couch and staying there for a while.
It can change floor types pretty easily, even at a minor height change, so it found its way into the kitchen, and then the foyer, quite easily. It couldn't get from the foyer to the living room though -- our divider is a stone piece that's over 1cm above the floor, which triggers the bumper.
(The bumper cushions the impact when Roomba hits something, and also triggers the "turn and try something different" instruction. They're actually quite complicated in the way they handle obstacles, judging by the neat shape-following I saw today. I'd love to get a look at the high-level design of the software.)
Later, I decided it was time for a challenge. As mentioned previously, the basement in our house is quite messy, and has fun features that will continue to generate mess even after thorough cleaning, such as the cat littler and the crumbling concrete in a few spots. I let it go to town down there for as long as it wanted, since there was nothing dangerous and very little clutter. I stopped it once to clean out the dirt collector, but otherwise it just puttered away for about an hour, then with a "ta-daa" (in beeping form) it was done. The basement is pretty good -- not 100%, but certainly 90%+. I wouldn't have been willing to spend the time required to get that far today, due to other commitments, so we're definitely ahead.
The cats are not fans of the Roomba of course, but they watched from halfway up the stairs where they were in a safe position of power over this weird noisy thing in their house. No pouncing, but a little bit of plaintive stares, as if to say, "Oh my god, human, we just got over that damned dog you brought over last week. Seriously, what did we do?"
The previous owner who auctioned it had a friendly fully-grown German Shepherd Dog (or Alsatian) that was afraid of it, so it had to go. Ha!
Noise levels: not enough to be a bother, but definitely noisy. Compared to a full-size vacuum it's quite quiet, but compared to relaxing with a book it's very loud. So I think we'll just run it when we leave to go somewhere, that way the cats can run around with it and we don't have to listen to it.
