Home Robotics

Technology is a beautiful thing. Especially for those of us that hate to do the dishes, get up to change the channel or even walk over to grandma’s house to say hi. For those things we have (respectively) dishwashers, remote controls and of course the telephone. I’ve talked about Z-Wave for awhile now and automating the home – but that’s automating electrical currents. But what I haven’t talked about is automating the cleaning that goes on in the home. And I’m not referencing putting a cleaning service on automated bill pay; I’m talking about robotics.

To sweep, mop and do tasks beyond those that have been automated for 30 or more years we’re going to need to employ the help of robotics. To most, robotics just seem really expensive. But if you’ve seen Robot Wars you should know by now that not all people who build robots are actually made of money. And if there is to be large scale introduction of robotics in the home, again beyond the automations that we have used for decades, integration needs to be cost effective. iRobot has been a company that has been getting simple, robotic devices at a price point that makes its products accessible in the home.

For starters, there’s the Roomba. The Roomba is a vacuum cleaner that, well, runs itself. There’s also a cousin to the Roomba, the Dirt Dog Workshop Robot, which will do pretty much the same stuff as the Roomba but is designed for messy workshop areas with more dirt and less carpet… Most have already heard of the Roomba though and in addition, there’s newer products from iRobot that can clean gutters, mop and even clean pools. The gutter cleaner is the Looj Gutter Cleaning Robot, which is a bit of a departure from a demure little disk that looks like something Buck Rogers wore around his neck (iRobot’s future maybe) and a little more like a tank with a weird gutter cleaner thingie in the front (I’m sure the good folks at iRobot have a slightly more technical term for it).

The mop though, is to me one of the most interesting. Most don’t consider robotics to mix with water. But the Scooba Floor-Washing Robot is just that, a robot with a tank of Clorox floor cleaner in it. It will mop your floors while you’re out to the grocery store so you get home and the hardwood floors, tile or linoleum are all sparkly and nice. Helpful if you have a baby that likes to launch food across the room in your home…

And once you’ve made the leap to put liquid inside the robot you might as well straight up submerge the thing. The Verro Pool-Cleaning Robot is the most expensive retail robot that iRobot makes, but it has the potential to save savvy pool owners in warmer states a lot of money. It certainly doesn’t replace a professional pool cleaning service, but is likely to reduce the frequency that they are needed. And once you have the control aquatic environments down you might as well move into the ocean with iRobots since they make underwater oceanic robots as well. And then if you can do all that other stuff, you might as well get into diffusing bombs. Overall, I’m impressed with how well iRobot as a corporation has managed to expand their portfolio and some of the talent they’ve brought in to help them do so.