the dust-busting Roomba 560, form and function unite

Now, robots don’t have to be humanoid. Srsly. Over the next few days I will bring to you those robots that can make your life easier by way of cleaning your dirty floors. First up is the iRobot Roomba.

The Roomba has been around since 2002, with many versions produced over the years giving us today’s models, the 5xx series. The Roomba itself can autonomously navigate through rooms, over carpet and hard floor, under furniture (when it isn’t getting wedged there..), dodging ‘cliffs’ and hopefully avoiding your pets whilst detecting and sucking up all the dirt it finds/encounters. When it gets low on battery it even returns to a docking station to get its charge on.

The fun (?) doesn’t stop with the cleaning, you can hack Roomba, modify them and even get your pets to ride them:

You can buy the Roomba 560 vacuum cleaning robot here, for £300 – about the same price as a Dyson! I would like one, but the cost is a bit prohibitive since I am a student – plus there are now competitors in this marketplace with exciting features that could sway things for me..! More to come this week..

As a little side-note, iRobot make quite a few robots, not least they make tactical robots. Expect to see some on I LIKE ROBOTS in the future.

iRobot

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