On Tuesday, we posted a video from iRobot showing a Roomba in a floor coverage lab test. In the video, it appeared as though the Roomba missed some areas in the center of the room, but this is because there were pegs in the floor (which you can’t really see, even in HD) designed to simulate the legs of furniture, and the robot was cleaning around those. So, the coverage pattern was really pretty good.

The whole suite of features that I was talking about in that post are now called iAdapt. It’s important to point out, though, that iAdapt is not anything new, it’s just a way for iRobot to refer to their cleaning features in a market environment where consumers now have a choice between robotic cleaning systems offering lots of new technology. 500 series Roombas have had iAdapt all along, iRobot just wasn’t calling it that.

While it may be true that most consumers aren’t really aware of the technology that allows the Roomba to do what it does, calling it iAdapt isn’t going to solve the core perception problem of Roomba not being intelligent, or at least, not being as intelligent as other cleaning robots that can localize themselves. As commenters on our previous post pointed out, iRobot isn’t in trouble yet, because they’ve had the market to themselves for so long and they still have much more brand recognition than either Mint or Neato. But, it’s just too easy to look at (say) Neato and Roomba side to side and say that Neato is smart and fast and Roomba is dumb and slow, even if it’s not at all true, which it isn’t. It would be another thing if Roombas were substantially cheaper, but they’re not, and iRobot likes to push the expensive ones anyway.

Even though I don’t think that iAdapt is going to do much for Roomba as a brand, it (and the media event in NY where it was discussed) signals that iRobot is starting to understand that it’s no longer enough to just produce a cleaning robot… It has to be a technologically sophisticated cleaning robot, in a competitive sense, as consumers are presented with multiple options. Does this mean that iRobot will be introducing something new in the near future? We keep hoping that it’ll happen, and I’m sure that it will happen eventually… But the longer iRobot waits, the harder it will be for them to win back consumers who have purchased a different, “smarter” cleaning robot instead.

[ iRobot: Engineering Awesome ]

The picture, btw, is the setup for a long exposure floor coverage demo. You can view the result at the link above.

iRobot’s YouTube channel has been sadly dormant for the last few years, after a promising 2009 launch packed with weird prototypes and engineer answers. Yesterday, iRobot uploaded a whole bunch of new videos focused on showcasing the features of the Roomba, perhaps feeling a little bit left out after all the recent buzz about the Neato XV-11 and Mint.

The above video, for example, shows a lab test of floor coverage. However, I can’t help but point out that it’s not clear just how long the robot took to achieve this amount of coverage (but it seems like it was a pretty long time), and that it missed areas in the center of the room. It’s the same sort of thing with the rest of the videos: yes, Roomba can follow walls, and yes, it can vacuum around chairs. But these features (besides dirt detection, which is admittedly both handy and cool) are no longer distinguishing, and again, we haven’t seen any significant improvements to the underlying technology for years, while other companies innovate and introduce new products.

I love iRobot, I just really miss their continuing commitment innovation when it comes to consumer robotics.

[ iRobot @ YouTube ]

See this? This is an honest to goodness, real, working, commercially available jetpack. Or maybe a ducted fanpack, but whatever… The point is, YOU’RE TOO LATE, because the Martin Jetpack is now robotic and has no use for humans. Yep, that one piece of the future that would have been totally awesome has just passed us by.

Martin Aircraft Company has been working on a practical jetpack for years now, and we’ve been following it over on OhGizmo. The lowdown is that the jetpack uses two huge ducted fans that you wear kinda like a backpack, and will propel you 8,000 feet up at 60 miles an hour for 30 minutes. It runs on the same gas your car does, doesn’t require a pilot’s license, and includes a ballistic parachute (that works at low altitudes) just in case.

From the beginning, Martin had autonomy in mind for their jetpack, for one simple reason: nobody really wanted to be the guy who had to strap it on and see how fast it would go, or who had to check if the emergency parachute system worked. So, it was a natural step to turn the robotic testing system into a total robotic flying system, and now Martin is hoping that their ‘Skyhook’ will be able to fill a niche between man-portable reconnaissance UAVs and larger, infrastructure dependent drones like Predators. Skyhook can take off and land vertically while carrying up to 100 kilos of payload, which would be ideal for local resupplying of isolated units. Plus, like, it’s a jetpack. Think StarCraft 2.

Currently, Martin needs some funding to make this possible, so do yourself (and them) a favor and go buy a jetpack… It’ll be the best $100,000 you’ve ever spent.

[ Martin Jetpack ] VIA [ Fox News ]

We knew that Innvo Labs was working on some upgrades to Pleo, but all has now been revealed over at Bob The Pleo forums, where Innvo Lab CEO Derek Dotson discussed the new “Pleo Reborn.” If you’re a fan of Pleo, you pretty much have to read the entire interview, but I’ve condensed most of the new features if you’d rather just skim:

-Pleos are now male or female (blue or pink), and will react to each other accordingly: females make gentle noises at each other, males step back and shout at each other, and a male and female will make noises and lean against each other

-Pleo skin coloring will be randomized slightly, so that two Pleos produced at the same time will look distinctive. There will also be 10 different eye colors.

-Pleo skin durability improved, should now last 5x longer

-New lithium polymer battery more than doubles lifetime to 120 – 150 minutes, LED battery indicator added underneath Pleo

-Pleo will have a ‘seed’ personality from the factory. Some will learn faster than others, and some will tend to be happier (or more mopey).

-Pleo now knows what time it is and will alter its behaviors accordingly; for example, it will want to be fed in the afternoon and act sleepy in the evening

-Pleo can ‘smell’ RFID tags

-Pleo now has voice recognition, and you can name it, and it will respond to that name… As long as it’s you saying it, not anyone else

-By combining RFID tags that instruct Pleo to perform specific behaviors with voice recognition, it’s now possible to train Pleo to respond to different commands, such as “bow” or “come to me”

-Many more touch sensors have been added, along with corresponding behaviors. For example, if you pet Pleo’s side, it will lean into you.

-Pleo now has a G sensor that lets it detect acceleration and impacts as well as touch

-Pleo’s nose cam now allows for target tracking

-Motor speed and response have been improved, especially in the tail, head, and neck

More awesome stuff, plus video, after the jump. (Read more…)

As we commented in our review, Mint takes a different approach to robotic cleaning than we’ve seen before: it eschews the vacuum for simple, silent, and efficient sweeping and mopping. Despite its simplicity, however, Mint is also able to localize itself, which is a pretty neat trick for a $250 robot. With all this in mind, we had some questions about how Mint came to be as well as what the future holds, and Evolution Robotics’ President and CEO Dr. Paolo Pirjanian was kind enough to help satisfy our curiosity. It’s a long interview packed with interesting info on the development process for Mint and the NorthStar system (as well as hints about what’s next), and you can read it all, after the jump. (Read more…)

Remember all those questions you had about Mint? Well, we now have answers. Answers part one, anyway. Tomorrow, we’ll be posting an interview with Evolution Robotics president and CEO Dr. Paolo Pirjanian, where we’ll be talking about the history of Mint, as well as what Evolution Robotics is planning for the future. But today, we have answers to some of your more specific questions about Mint, from Mike Dooley, the vice president of product development at Evolution Robotics.

-Why did you decide not to include an automatic charging system?

We gave serious consideration to having a self-charging dock, and with NorthStar already on board to guide Mint back home, it was tempting to add (folks may recall that Rovio already uses NorthStar to self-dock). Ultimately we decided to go without one based on feedback from consumers.

The most common comment was that when Mint was done cleaning, they’d prefer just to put it away – just like they would their mop. For many, having a robot and a charging dock sitting out on the floor all of the time added more clutter to the room, even though Mint is pretty styling! :) So, we worked with the Fuse Project to give Mint a very slim vertical footprint, making it easy to tuck away by standing it on its end.

We were also not sure how much time and effort a self-charging dock would really save. As you mentioned in your review, other “automated” robots aren’t fully automatic. With robotic vacuums that self-charge, you still have to empty the bin and do things like check the brush. Instead, we looked at the total user experience, and how to make it as seamless as possible. That led us to things like making it super-easy to change the cloth, with features like the magnetic pad and zip-to-lock grip strips.

Lots more on carpet detection, Rovio beacons, the NorthStar system, and hacking, after the jump. (Read more…)

It’s almost always exciting to see something new from iRobot, but since the 5xx series of Roomba showed up in 2007, “new” is a relative term when it comes to their cleaning robots. The Roomba 572 Pet Series is “new” in that it’s got a new number, but as far as I can tell, the only things that make the 572 different from other 500 series Roombas is the following:

-It comes with three different bins, which you can buy separately
-It comes with replacement brushes and filters, which you can buy separately
-It costs $500

The 572 also includes other features common to higher end 500 series Roombas, such as scheduling, Lighthouse compatibility, and a remote control (sweet!).

Maybe I’m missing something, but it’s kinda disappointing when a “new” Roomba is just the same as pretty much every other Roomba, just with a slightly different mix of features and accessories. I mean, iRobot might as well offer a build-a-Roomba option on their website, where you can toss in all the options you feel like you need and assign it a random three digit number starting with 5 and they’ll quote you a price. You know, come to think of it, that would be pretty cool…

It’s certainly worth mentioning, though, that the Roomba still beats out the Neato Robotics XV-11 and Mint Sweeper robots when it comes to pet hair and carpet… I would just have to recommend that you get a cheaper 500 series that comes with fewer accessories but still cleans just as well.

[ iRobot Roomba 572 ]

This is a set of all of the different long exposure pics that I’ve taken while doing reviews of cleaning robots. I spent a likely excessive amount of time reviewing each robot in detail (and you can read those reviews at the links below), but really, the pictures explain the cleaning patterns better than I ever could. It’s illuminating (so to speak) to see them all right up against one another, so here they are:

iRobot Roomba 560, 45 minutes

Neato Robotics XV-11, 12 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Sweeping Mode), 15 minutes

Evolution Robotics Mint (Mopping Mode), 23 minutes

Three very different robots, three very different cleaning techniques. Check out the individual reviews for more details on each.

[ iRobot ]
[ Neato Robotics ]
[ Evolution Robotics ]

iRobot has had a virtual monopoly on the consumer robot vacuum market since they introduced the Roomba in 2002. But with some new competition this year, there’s now a real perception problem when consumers compare a Roomba’s cleaning technique to that of Mint or the Neato XV-11, which are able to localize themselves, map a room, and clean in straight efficient lines. Irrespective of whether ‘smart’ cleaning is more or less effective (and iRobot argues convincingly that its unstructured patterns do in fact clean better), Roomba’s pseudo-random behaviors seem less sophisticated and ‘dumber’ by comparison. The Roomba, which (I would argue) hasn’t seen a significant upgrade since the release of the third generation 5xx series in 2007, is going to need some kind of upgrade, because consumers are now expecting household robots to be smarter.

This patent application, last updated in April of this year and unearthed by Robot Stock News, seems to suggest that iRobot is at least considering adding localization to their line of cleaning robots. The patent is for a “Celestial Navigation System for an Autonomous Robot,” and works by using (and stop me if you’ve heard this one) a projector to put IR spots on your ceiling that the robot uses to figure out where it is. Yep, sounds a lot (suspiciously a lot) like NorthStar, used by Mint. And just like NorthStar, if iRobot implements this system it’s going to mean that you’d need a projector in every room you want cleaned.

The Celestial Navigation patent does talk about a bunch of potentially interesting features… For example, each room gets its own ID, so you could schedule your robot to clean specific rooms at specific times, and then monitor its progress on a remote. And there’s even the suggestion that the beacons will be powered wirelessly by the robot itself.

Also, since Roombas can sense dirt, they might be able to create a “dirt map” of your house, and then spend more time cleaning the dirtier areas. The patent says that this technology could easily be adapted for “floor waxing and polishing, floor scrubbing, ice resurfacing, unfinished floor sanding, stain/paint application, ice melting and snow removal, grass-cutting, etc” but we’ve heard that kind of thing before.

Using a localization system and cleaning in straight lines would be a notable shift in cleaning philosophy for iRobot. If you remember, iRobot has told us that on surfaces like carpet, the multiple angle approach cleans more effectively than a single pass, so I’m not sure how they’re going to justify what seems to be a very traditional straight line approach. Of course, besides the patent, there’s no actually indication that they’re going to be DOING any of this, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

[ Patent (PDF) ] VIA [ Robot Stock News ]

Thanks Thorn!

Evolution Robotics’ Mint sweeper robot made its debut at CES 2010, where we got a demo of it exhibiting its cleaning behaviors on video. Mint offers flexibility by doing away with the vacuum entirely, and using either wet or dry cleaning pads, Swiffer style. It’s certainly simpler, but does it work as well as the competition? Our review, after the jump. (Read more…)