Funnily enough my Roomba is the ONE thing I rely on to argue against the “robotic uprising”. When people fawn over 1X’s Neo or Tesla humanoid I can happily testify that as relatively long term mobile robot owner… it sucks! In theory it’s amazing right, in theory you program it, go out while it clean the place, go back to charge itself, etc. So much free time for you now, right?
No… you need to make way for it. You need to actually setup the place for such a basic task. Think you can just “wing it” and let it work while you sip on a cocktail outside? Sure, come back to find it in an enraged BDSM session, rope all over it as it pulls over a char with cable entangle deep inside.
Honestly it’s like AI more broadly : the concept is so simple to understand and the result is something we ALL want… that every single time there is an improvement, no matter how small, we love to speculate that truly this time we are getting “close” to make it work. Truth is, we have no idea of the complexity of the problem.
Related https://rodneybrooks.com/why-todays-humanoids-wont-learn-dexterity/ who did make Roombas and more.
iRonic
Got a Roomba for my previous place and it eventually sabotaged itself by scratching the cover of the alignment beam for docking until the unit could no longer align itself with the station. It was an obvious bug in the system, but iRobot wouldn’t provide any customer service without extensive repair costs.
That was the end of my adventures into home robotics.
This pic always confused me. The outlet should have had two running throughout the day for redundant cleaning duty just to show off the technology. It shows a lack of confidence in the product.
It’s legitimately because they are gimmicks. They will never get your floor as clean as a push broom. They replace the lowest hanging fruit of the cleaning cycle which is already very easy, which doesn’t require you to move things out of the way. If you actually want a clean house, the robot vac will do about 10% of the work.
Lol, no.
Without my roborock I’d have cat hair everywhere.
You either don’t have pets or you enjoy sweeping every day. Either way, it’s obviously not for you, but that’s no reason to be disparaging about the tech.
We are thinking of getting a roborock (any recommendations welcome). I don’t expect it to do a deep clean but as it is right now, we have a kid, and ergo, there is sand and crumbs everywhere. We live in a three room apartment. There is so much sand and dirt in the corridor oh my god. I vacuum it two times a day. And then there are crumbles everywhere. I just don’t want to feel like I am walking on literal egg shells most of the time. My back hurts from vacuuming so often and it is loud and unhandy. Will a roborock handle the superficial crumbs, dust, sand? If yes that is enough for me. I need it as an addition to regular cleaning, not as a substitute.
Yes definitely, my cat loves carrying his litter out of the box and the vacuum sucks it all up, you will just need to be mindful about emptying it regularly. Though the new and expensive ones clean themselves out. Ive never used the mop function on mine, but they’re also better on the models with the fancy base station as it changes water for you.
I’ve had mine for almost 4 years now and it goes once a day. It also survived a bunch of diatomaceous earth that it ended up needing to suck up.
I’m not sure what exactly regularly means when it comes to emptying, but if it is once or twice for a run of a 70 square meter apartment that is absolutely fine with me. With cleaning, I don’t mind once a day. Do you think that would be enough? Also, may I ask what model you are using? I’ve read so many professional reviews but somehow a stranger’s opinion on the internet feels more authentic xD
Edit: I’ve literally stepped in dirt and sand while sending the reply :(
No the reason I know they are useless is because I had a hairy dog. I’m sorry you don’t move things out of the way when you clean, and that there are piles of hair wrapped around every cord and behind every obstacle in your house.
But more to the point, yes. I clean quite frequently, because I enjoy both having pets and a clean home.
You don’t have to be so rude.
I’m sorry you leave things on the floor and have a cluttered home. I’m sorry you you have cords all over your floors. I’m sorry you have so many obstacles on your floors, like you don’t clean up your kids/pets toys and have to move them only when sweeping. I’m sorry you’re so disorganized and lazy.
But more to your point, my floors are always free of obstacles when the roborock runs, because I always pick things up and don’t leave them on the floor. Because it takes care of sweeping/vacuuming twice a day, I have the time and energy to focus on other cleaning tasks. As like you, I enjoy both having pets and a clean home, but I additionally enjoy a tidy home.
They’re just an asshole, best not engage.
Meh, you started it
You obviously don’t have stairs. The moment you introduce any level disparity in your property and suddenly the product is utterly useless.
No it’s not, you just need one for every floor. Or just one for the dirtiest floor (with most foot traffic from outside)
I have very little home automation, but a vacuum robot is one of them and they work great. Mopping and vacuuming.
It’s tedious work out of our hands and I’d say it’s more than 10% because you have to do it all the time.
Probably liability issues. Some customer doesn’t see it, steps on it, and face plants into the floor then they get sued.
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This is what their customers will be doing in 6 months when they have to shut down the app.
LLM powered roombas that last 3 months is the future trust.
How much is that model? Does she come in Cherry red?
iRony
This image is 10 years old - I bought the 980 (top shelf, third from the left, highest model pictured) as my first bot. Black friday 2016.
For anyone wondering, iR bots have great smarts but suck ass for hardware. I went through a total of 6 iR bots across 3 models, spending up to 1.6k USD for a model (and extended warranties by the store, which I used every time each failed, again, out of warranty). Oh and iR customer support is staffed only by certified assholes - I’m a disabled tech enthusiast and literally every single person I spoke to, both phone and email, was a condescending motherfucker. Every, last, one.
I’ve tried almost all the brands sold in the US, and I prefer Neato, which was bought by a German company and killed, so uh… that’s great. Shark is absolutely literal garbage, the one I bought failed after 28 days, Ecovacs are designed to fail after about 9 months of moderate use every other day (a wheel will start to fail to rotate, causing it to go I’m circles; two models, 3 units, across 2.5y did this). I’m testing a Roborock that has been okay so far, but it’s only been in use for two months…
Usually, extended warranties are bullshit. Here, I implore you to get one if you’re getting a bot. I’m now on bot make/model 8 (not counting replacements of the same model!), in 9 years. Seriously.
Anyway, ‘lol funny picture’.
Wyze makes a good one for 150 USD. It comes with 4 wheel drive and can drive over a pile of 100ft extension cord tangled on the floor. No account bullshit. It’s not best sucker upper but it doesn’t wildly work good for the cheap price. Keeps the house mostly spotless. Fuck the mop versions they suck. But the vacuum version is worth the money. You do manually empty the bin and long hair jams the rolling vacuum head but it’s small potatoes compared to the dog hair it gets.
Nah. Got a Roomba for cheap 10 years ago, still does it’s job. But man is that thing dumb. I’m no expert but i’m sure even i could do the algorithms better.
Their classic bump and go ones are super dumb. The ones with the cameras pointed at the ceiling did alright. I don’t think iR has ever transitioned to lidar, still using slam for nav.
I just bought one of the new 705s that has LIDAR and it’s been pretty fantastic. Most of their new lineup has LIDAR now and it’s been pretty good compared to my old j7’s vSLAM. I’m really not a fan of them being app based and hope that they’ll eventually work with Valetudo, but with 2 huskies and cats I just really don’t want to have to manually vacuum every single day.
Oh cool, they finally started using lidar! The slam tech was impressive for the data and locational awareness it could do but as soon as I got my first neato I was like ‘holy crap this is night and day’ for nav.
I thought that Amazon bought iR a few years ago and was expecting them to let the brand die, nothing much happened for the first couple years. I’ll still be very skeptical but competition is good.
Fortunately/unfortunately, they didn’t get bought by Amazon. I only say unfortunately because they made a lot of business decisions expecting it to go through, and when it didn’t, has caused them a ton of trouble. They seem to be hanging in there pretty well and this current gen of bots seems to be pretty solid. I’ve had iR stuff for over 20 years now and have generally only had good experiences, so they’re still my go-to.
TIL, I thought it had gone through
My Roborock has been serving me well for over a year, even the home assistant integration has been painless. I’ve never had a different brand so reading your post makes me feel very fortunate. I actually recently ordered some new rollers and mop pad and was pleased how serviceable it is.
Yeah mine too like what 6-7 years now. Recently bought another just to have downstairs
Easy to replace parts. Went though a few brushes and filters
I’m on my third Roborock only because of upgrading to newer models. The other two were sold in full working order, never had any issues.
My ex has an… S5? for a few years now, so I took his experience as a hopefully positive experience. I ordered my Saros 10R like two and a half months ago, a sale just happened to coincide with the Ecovacs replacement failing. I also got credit for replacement parts, which is nice.
I had issues with initial setup, where my phone needed me to switch off cellular data to pair the bot to the network. Frustrating, found a page on reddit that nudged me in the right direction. Once that was sorted, it’s been quite pleasant. Not the lowest maintenence, and it’s suction could be… significantly stronger (even on ‘max+’ it can fail to pickup large hair from the carpet). But overall, I’m really happy with it so far. The app is on much higher quality than Ecovacs too, even though they are… suspiciously similar (down to the UI and location of buttons), the Roborock is waaaaay less buggy and feeding bad info to me.
I bought the extended warranty through RR directly (also the bot directly) instead of a store or third-party. Hopefully if it does have issues in the next… 4 years, I think? that customer service will be pleasant. iR set the bar underground, Ecovacs and Neato were good (above my low expectations), so fingers crossed. Be even better if it manages to work through the warranty without issues, it’d be the first to achieve it for me.
Neato was bought by Vorwerk and as far as I can tell, the Kobold VR7 is a successor to Neato‘s robots. So it doesn’t seem to be all that dead. The VR7 has great hardware but it’s software is a bit lackluster.
I’ve been happy with my Roborock so far.
literally every single person I spoke to, both phone and email, was a condescending motherfucker. Every, last, one.
I don’t know what worse, this or a technical support going through the script, page by page, despite me already trying most of their solutions before ringing. Nowadays I only ring them when I want to initiate return/repair procedure.
I’ve got a Roomba and Braava jet and I think the opposite: the software (navigation) is shit but the hardware (cleaning-wise, not including the lack of lidar here) is great.
She’s not cleaning because the floors dirty, she’s just trying to pass the time, when I worked at a small shop that got fuck all customers, I cleaned that floor so much, I think I stripped the top layer off.
So literally toiling? How utterly depressing.
Yep. Working clothing retail on a slow day? Time to fold and refold a lot of shirts just to do something other than stand behind the counter looking dumb.
Is there really nothing else you can do than that Sisyphean task?
Bring a book or something?
Unfortunately, the work culture here is so ass-backwards that would get you in trouble. The whole “if you have time to lean you have time to clean/ I’m not paying you to stand around” exploitative nonsense. You must look busy and act like you are doing work at every possible second for the boss’s pleasure, less they feel they aren’t getting a return on their “investment”.
It comes from an old school “Protestant work ethic” which has been a pervasive sickness in American culture since its foundations.
other than stand behind the counter looking dumb.
jokes on you I look dumb no matter where I’m standing.
After a couple of hours you start hoping some shithead kid comes in and messes the store up so you have something to actually do.
Is it a strict no-phones policy?
And when the store is dead you actually listen to that bullshit and don’t just sneak your phone anyway?
It’s like ray-eee-aaaaaaiinnnnn
I mean, it’s a shop that sell robot vacuum, and emplyee is sweeping a small space themselves, what’s the issue here? You can’t expect to use the robot to do the work for such a small space.
I can and do
Right? Even if that’s a really suboptimal use of one of those, that’d be a great way to show them off if nothing else.
If I was in the market for one of those things (which… hell no!) and I entered an outlet for them and the first thing I see is a clean floor with one of the little fuckers buzzing around? Fuckin sold. (except hell no)
Well there is a robot unboxed just sitting right there on the chair.
Yea but I can do that without a robot.
Not sure if sarclstic but they make robot mops too and they can work on areas of any size.
In what part does it read like sarcasm?
Also i know, i own one and use it in my bedroom, but in what way does this post fit this sub?
Edit: okay i can see it now. But what i mean is you can’t expect business going the suboptimal way of using a robot to clean such a small space while their employee can do it in 5 min. If the supplier didn’t come with a free sample unit then the owner will have to pay for it themselves. And this is at most an irony, but nothing dystopian about it
To your edit
You really don’t see how what you mean is a dystopian way of thinking? Who fucking cares about what the owner has to pay when the money he is using to pay for it is being generated by the labor of the workers? Instead of the profits from their labor going to improve their working conditions, they are being stolen by an owner who is exploiting their labor for his own personal enrichment. Do you not understand how that is exploitative and dystopian?
?
Do you ever work retail? How is sweeping the floor dystopian? Good lord how spoiled you people truly are, to even considered sweeping the floor a dystopian because it didn’t done using machine.
You’re literally trying to make excuses for bosses commanding people to toil needlessly. How fucking warped is your perception of reality?
It’s called a job. Sweeping the floor and cleaning the working environment is part of the job. You guys never work retail or blue collar for small business, that one is clear as daylight.
Gods, it’s actually pathetic how you do not understand how the current work struck for retail and blue collar work is exploitative and dystopian. And absolutely laughing at you trying to call a retailer like this a “small business”
You clearly have no class consciousness
