iRobot Adds Minor Upgrades To New Roombas
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Tuesday, 27 of October , 2009 at 12:40 am
We haven’t heard that much from iRobot recently regarding the Roomba, which stands to reason since the recent economy hasn’t been favorable to the luxury home robotics market while the interest in military robots (like the PackBot) keeps increasing. It makes sense, then, that iRobot looks to be upgrading its existing line of robot vacuums with performance improvements rather than developing entirely new products. One such improvement, to be introduced in the Roomba 536, is the “AeroVac,” an improved dustbin and vacuum system:
“Roomba’s AeroVac is the latest breakthrough in bin technology. A powerful vacuum maximizes air flow through Roomba’s cleaning head to pull hair and debris off the brushes and into the bin. This new single chamber bin fills evenly and holds more debris, allowing you to empty it less often.”
Also, the charging dock is smaller, and the virtual walls have been redesigned to automatically set their intensity. Weirdly, the handy carrying handle has been removed, and the 536 doesn’t respond to multi-room Lighthouse technology like the 535 does. Lame.
This upgrade has been reported in Roombas for over a month now with only a minimum of fanfare, although officially, other Roomba models aren’t scheduled to get it until January. It’s always good to see companies working improvements into an existing product line without just developing a new model and charging a bunch more for it, and honestly, I’m surprised that iRobot didn’t do just that, considering their proclivity for releasing expensive Roombas without significant differences from the cheaper models.
[ Roomba 536 @ HSN ] VIA [ RSN ] and [ Robot Reviews ]
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Category: Consumer
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