When we posted our reviews of the Neato XV-11 and iRobot Roomba 560 robot vacuums, you had some questions. Well, Neato and iRobot have some answers. We also gave Neato the chance to respond to our iRobot interview… We’ve got it all for you, after the jump. (Read more…)

If you’re not too worried about comparing features and you just want a cheap robot vacuum, you have 24 hours 23 hours and 45 minutes to pull the trigger on a totally decent iRobot Roomba 530. It doesn’t have scheduling and can’t do lighthouses, and doesn’t have as much battery life as some of the other Roomba models, and it’s refurbished, but it does a good job cleaning up and will only cost you $145 shipped on Woot.com. This is less than half of what a 530 costs new from iRobot, which is a heck of a deal. Act fast, though, because the deal will disappear in 23 hours 45 minutes 30 minutes or when they sell out.

[ Woot ]

We’re putting together a head-to-head comparison of the iRobot Roomba 560 and the Neato XV-11, but before we put the issue to rest, is there anything else you’d like to know? Maybe something that we didn’t cover to your satisfaction in our reviews? We’ve had additional questions about energy consumption, noise levels, and robot height, but now’s the time to let us know if there’s anything else we missed, since we’ve got people at iRobot and Neato who are ready, willing, and able to answer any and all of your questions. Maybe you’re wondering why the Roomba is round, or what happened to the XV-1 through XV-10.

Or maybe you’re wondering which robot is better at jousting.

Yes, we made them joust.

So, if you’ve got any more questions, leave them in the comments and we’ll get them answered, and we’ll have the ultimate comparison post (with jousting!) up in the next few days.

The iRobot Roomba is not a new product. Since 2002, it has been (more or less) the only robotic vacuum available to consumers in the US. iRobot has been continually improving the Roomba, however, and the Roomba 560 is one of the latest and most sophisticated models. Now that there’s some new competition on the horizon, it’s a good time to take an updated look at the Roomba and what makes it a reliable and effective autonomous vacuum. We’ll have a review of the aforementioned competition (the Neato XV-11) up tomorrow so that you can compare the two, but for today, we have a review of the Roomba 560.

If you’re not familiar with the Roomba, here’s the deal: it’s a robotic vacuum cleaner that can clean your floors all by itself. All you have to do is tell it to start cleaning, and it’ll go clean, avoiding obstacles and getting around furniture and ultimately returning to its home base to recharge itself. There’s a lot more too it than that, of course… Lots more, after the jump. (Read more…)

The home robotics market has gotten a bit more diverse in the last year, and iRobot’s Roomba is facing some new competition. BotJunkie talked with Nancy Dussault Smith, Vice President of Marketing Communications at iRobot, about what’s keeping the Roomba the robot vacuum to beat. She discusses how iRobot has been improving the latest generation of Roombas, how the cleaning behavior of the Roomba is not random, and how she sees the Roomba as distinguishing itself from other vacuum robots such as the Neato XV-11.

The entire interview follows, after the jump. (Read more…)

Yes. We’ve got one. I had to do some things that no robot journalist should ever have to do, but I have a Neato XV-11 in my living room right now.

And a Roomba 560.

They’re just sitting there, staring at each other. You could cut the tension with a robot wielding a knife.

I know what you’re wondering… Which one is better?

Well, I’ll tell you. But not until next week, since I need some time to review both the Roomba and the XV-11, put together video of the latter, and let them bump into each other until only one robot is left sucking.

I have the XV-11 for just 24 hours (after which I think it’s been programmed to kill me), so if you have any specific questions you’d like answered, post a comment (quickly). And no, I won’t rip it open and show you the laser sensor.

Stay tuned.

Some people might complain that Roombas are slow. This turtle, on the other hand, seems to be hanging on for dear life.

Or maybe not. It’s a turtle, I can’t tell if he’s having fun or not.

Or she…? Ok, I give up. Is there a herpetologist in the house?

VIA [ Neatorama ]

Dino Segovis of DinoFab.com gives us the breakdown of a Roomba 4000 in a 20-minute, 2-part video packed with tons of digestible, relevant information!

Top 5 Things We Learned:

1. The Roomba 4000 is very hacker-friendly, in that is has innumerable sensors and motors, most of which are easily disconnected and repurposed.
2. If you’re taking apart your used Roomba, be ready for dust! These things work in dust, carpet, and generally dirty places all day- so get your mask ready.
3. The drive wheels use planetary gears, which is mostly just badass – planetary gears offer a nifty solution to creating a gear train that ends in the same axis as the input. HowStuffWorks has a great article with more info on planetary gears here.
4. For the front bumper, the Roomba 4000 uses IR sensors, instead of a simple button sensor to detect whether it’s touching a wall. Presumably this is for durability reasons- though that doesn’t explain why they opted for normal pushbutton sensors elsewhere.
5. Every sensor has a unique plug, making disassembly/reassembly infinitely less terrifying, since it’s easy to determine what goes where. No more plugging the kneebone into the jawbone.

All in all, the 2-part video is an impressive show of Roomba knowledge- the ease with which Segovis moves through the different parts of the dissection show that he’s had his hands in a fair few robots. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did- now I’m off to Craigslist to look for my own!

[ I Heart Robotics ]

Google, and companies like Google, are out there to help us. They take the personal information that we give them, and make sure that it’s as available to us as conveniently as possible in as many forms as we like and from wherever we may be. Problem is, Google can’t be everywhere, so sometimes there are questions that it can’t answer… Questions like, “where did I leave that book I was reading last night?” Wouldn’t it be great if you could just Google that?

You can’t, yet. But you can Gåågle it, with your very own GåågleBot. “GåågleBot” is pronounced just like “Googlebot,” which is Google’s automated web indexer. “Gå” means “go” in Swedish, and the GåågleBot is a go-go mobile indexing robot created from a Roomba. GåågleBot goes about its normal vacuuming business, but as it does, a camera mounted on the front sends images back to a webserver via a wireless card. Using some optical character recognition software, the images are scanned for text, and anything that shows up is added to a searchable index.

At the moment, searching the index only returns the relevant image. So, if you’ve lost your book, GåågleBot can tell you whether it’s seen it, but not exactly where, although the picture it shows you might provide some clues. Problem is, without some modification, Roombas have no idea where they are in a room (beyond what information they can gather from their dock and virtual walls), but if you were to turn something like a Mint Sweeper or a Neato XV-11 into a Gååglebot, it might actually be able to tell you that the book you were reading last night is partially hidden underneath a stack of magazines. Uh, robotics magazines. Yeah.

You can find all the code to make your own GåågleBot at the link below.

[ GåågleBot ] VIA [ GoRobotics ]

You’re looking at the Navy’s newest recruits: from left to right, CS3 Scooba Stevens, Chief Miles O’Brien, and ITSN Unger. I kid you not, that’s what they’ve been named. The iRobot Scooba and Roombas are just part of an entire assemblage of robots who clean the floors on the USS Freedom, one of the newest and most ridiculously expensive warships in the Navy.

Apparently, the robots are generally free to roam around the ship on their own… Crew member still have to do some sweeping, but the robots help keep things tidy on a day to day basis. Give it a couple years, or maybe a decade, and the robots will be running the ship while humans do the sweeping. I’ll be more efficient that way.

VIA [ Military Times ]