Along with the new Scooba 230, iRobot has today unveiled a redesigned version of the Roomba, the 700 series. There are three different models: the 760, 770, and 780, and similar to other Roomba series, they mostly seem to differ from each other in frills. Here are the core upgrades from the 500 series:

-New design is smaller and sleeker.

-Battery life is 50% longer than previous generations (although it’s not clear whether they’re talking about the ‘premium’ Roombas with the increased battery life).

-I’ll quote this from the PR: “Persistent Pass Cleaning Pattern – when Roomba senses excessive dirt and debris, it uses a brush-like, back and forth motion to focus its cleaning effort in the dirty area it has detected.” Interesting; we’ll have to see it in operation.

The 770 and 780 include a few extras not present in the 760:

-Also quoted from the PR: “Debris Detector uses an optical sensor to detect larger, soft particles on the floor like popcorn, lint or paper chads, so Roomba can respond by focusing its cleaning pattern to ensure deeper, concentrated cleaning in that area.” The 760 doesn’t do this, so we’ll have to find out how exactly this differs from the regular ‘dirt detect’ feature that the 500 series Roombas have, and whether that feature is present in the 760.

-They both light up an indicator light when their dust bins are full.

-The 780 has a fancy capacitive touch sensor interface. No more buttons!

The Roomba 760 starts at $449; the 770 and and 780 will certainly be more expensive, possibly in $50 increments but we’ll find out shortly… We’ll be getting our first look and hands-on at CES starting Tuesday, and we’ve just scheduled a personal demo and interview on Friday, so stay tuned.

We’ve been begging iRobot to come out with something new and different for years now, and with the success of the Neato XV-11 and the Mint Sweeper, they’ve kicked things up a notch (or two) with four new models: the Scooba 230, and Roomba 760 770 and 780. It’s probably no coincidence that CES starts on Tuesday, and we’re going to make sure to get some demos and an interview while we’re there. In the meantime, here’s the rundown on the new mini-Scooba, the 230, and there’s a video of it in action too.

-At 6.5″ in diameter and 3.5″ tall, it’s tiny, and much better at getting around bathrooms than a full size Scooba.

-Uses either regular water or a soap solution to wash, scrub, and then vacuum up the dirty water to clean your tile or sealed hardwood floors, just like a full-size Scooba. Clean and dirty water are kept separate.

-It’s got all the same navigation abilities as the rest of iRobot’s cleaning robots and can use virtual walls.

-Cleans in either a 20 or 45 minute cycle, depending on the size of the room, but offers ‘single button’ operation so I’m not sure yet whether that’s an automatic thing or not.

-The dirty water can be dumped out by holding the robot over the sink; fill it with clean water directly from a faucet. The brushes pop out for easy cleaning.

-Looks like there’s a dock of sorts, but it may not be self-docking or self-charging.

-$299, available this spring.

[ iRobot Scooba 230 ]

Here in the US, we’re used to robot sumo happening at an, um, relaxing pace. Not so in Japan, as you can see in this vid. It’s from the 2010 All Japan Robot Sumo Finals, specifically the human-driven competition. Unsurprisingly, due to the pace of the match, the robots themselves are doing a lot of the thinking:

The secret is that they build a lot of autonomous functionality into the R/C robots as well. The operator can give the command to attack, but the actual engagement and high speed opponent tracking, is built into the robots.

This makes me wonder what the point is of having a human in the loop at all… It seems like the robots might be able to do a better job of reacting quickly and making decisions in such a confined environment. There’s also a separate category for fully autonomous robots, and here’s that final:

I’m not entirely sure what those big white panels are for, but if I had to guess, I’d say that they’re designed to fool the opponent’s sensors somehow, and if you watch the video closely, they may have worked.

There’s clearly a convergence taking place between the human controlled and autonomous sumo robots, so it’ll be interesting to see how the competition evolves. It’s possible that the two separate competitive categories will combine into one, but it’s hard to say whether the humans or the robots will have the edge, at least at first. While the robots are definitely able to react faster, they’re also restricted by their sensors, and they have less experience with deceptive tactics. But if nothing else, robots are fast learners, and it’s probably only a matter of time before they make humans completely redundant, at least when it comes to sumo.

[ Robot Sumo Finals ] VIA [ Robots Dreams ]

Exercise is much less work if you can pawn the hard stuff off on a teleoperated robot. The system in this video is kinda like the physical master/slave system that we saw last year, combined with Willow Garage’s PR2 Kinect demo. While I’m sure this technology has at least a few practical uses, I’m personally hoping that all those humanoid robot competitions will start requiring Kinect teleoperation. Just imagine how much more entertaining it would be to watch robot combat and wildly gesticulating humans at the same time, kinda like this. And you know what, that sounds cool enough that maybe it should be made into a movie or something…

VIA [ I Heart Robotics ] and [ Robots Dreams ]