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 all seen those videos of cats riding Roombas. It’s sort of cute. But what if you don’t want your cat riding on your Roomba? New from Robot Add-Ons is this accessory for your Roomba that provides your cat with a gentle suggestion not to sit on the robot:

Be assured, after just one use kitty won’t be coming anywhere near your Roomba ever again. Also works on turtles.

Speaking of Robot Add-Ons (you remember them, right?), they’re offering 15% off plus free shipping until November 11th on any of their awesome Roomba and Scooba upgrades. Get your holiday shopping done early (for your robots, at least).

[ Robot Add-Ons ]

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 ]

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!

CNET’s Daniel Terdiman, aka lucky sod, got to spend the day checking out iRobot’s headquarters in Massachusetts. While there he got some footage of these Roomba reliability testing chambers, where Roombas (tethered to power sources) vacuum until they can vacuum no more, at which point someone figures out what happened, fixes it, and then puts them back to work.

Daniel also spoke to iRobot’s president of government and industrial robots division, Joseph Dyer, who had a few things to say about military robotics. More, after the jump. (Read more…)

People use Roombas (generally, Creates) as bases for all kinds of robots… They’re not often used for bigger (heavier) bots, but if you stick four of ‘em together, you can apparently support a payload of up to 20kg or one Robotinho android. The Roomba QuadDrive was developed by University of Bonn’s Autonomous Intelligent Systems Lab, and consists of four Roomba 530s bolted together, and as far as mobile bases go, I imagine it’s probably pretty cheap and reliable. The top speed of 0.5 mph isn’t going to shock and awe, but it’s fine for tooling around a museum and scaring little kids:

And of course, the floors of that museum are damn clean. Quadruply damn clean.

[ Bonn AIS ] VIA [ Hizook ]

Now that we’ve reviewed both the iRobot Roomba 560 and the Neato XV-11, you’re probably wondering which one you should get. There’s no easy answer, but in this post we’ll highlight the features of each robot and the differences between them, so that you can decide which one is right for you.

If you haven’t read our individual reviews of each robot, you can get lots more detail at the following links:

BotJunkie Review: Neato Robotics XV-11
BotJunkie Review: iRobot Roomba 560

And, there will be jousting, after the jump. (Read more…)