iRobot Patents Roomba With Square Front
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 26 of May , 2009 at 5:19 am
Robot Stock News has dug up a patent application from iRobot in 2008 with drawings of a new type of Roomba with a square front and what looks to be a redesign of the cleaning system underneath. The idea behind this design is to make the robot better at “cleaning along wall edges or in corners,” which the current generation of round Roombas have tried to tackle with their generally ineffective spinning side brushes. And while a square front would certainly be better at doing that, sacrifices would have to be made when it comes to mobility: no more zero radius turns. And considering how often Roombas manage to stuff themselves into corners, this could be kinda a big deal.
Now, this certainly doesn’t mean that iRobot is going to come out with a square front Roomba any time soon (if at all). Remember the iRobot lawn mower patent from back in 2007? And while the concept certainly has merit, my guess is that this would be a more expensive robot, which would probably not go over well at the moment. The big question is, if this thing comes out, is it going to be a significant enough upgrade to convince people who haven’t yet bought a Roomba to buy one of these, or people who own Roombas to upgrade? I honestly don’t know, because I don’t know if the shortcomings of the Roomba (and edge cleaning is certainly one of these) would be best solved by modifications to hardware or software or both. In order for me to upgrade my Roomba, iRobot would have to convince me that they had something that would actually do the job as well as I could… Otherwise, it’s just more of a robot doing 80% of the work followed by a human doing 20% (your mileage may vary).
Oh, and one other thing… “Roomba” sort of has a round connotation, doesn’t it? Maybe they’ll call this thing “Squarmba” instead.
VIA [ RSN ]
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Comment by RichardOn
Made Tuesday, 26 of May , 2009 at 6:44 pm
Interesting site, but much advertisments on him. Shall read as subscription, rss.
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Made Sunday, 20 of November , 2011 at 3:16 pm
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