roomba

Your Roomba can do double duty as an air-quality tester and even a cat transporter, so why not a fragrance factory too?

Robot Add-ons has a nifty little accessory for your favorite robot hockey puck: RoomAroma is a stick-on fragrance that sweetens the air in your home while Roomba cleans up.

It's quite an innovative way to improve your air without bothering to plug in air fresheners, and it attaches to Roomba in a snap. It's no wonder the two guys behind Robot Add-ons are from iRobot. … Read more

Is Roomba going square?

Besides celebrating the vac-bot's tenth birthday today, iRobot announced that it's buying Evolution Robotics, whose sleek, four-sided Mint droid cleans hard surfaces with disposable cloths.

The $74 million deal brings the compact, lightweight Mint into the iRobot fold, giving the vacubot maker another product to tackle floors that aren't carpeted.

The scrubber was a potential rival to iRobot's Scooba robot. Now iRobot will get Evolution's know-how in sensing, navigation, and artificial intelligence, built up over 10 years.

"It's more about growing our capabilities -- both product line and long-term … Read more

When MIT roboticists wanted to launch an automated domestic vacuum cleaner for the masses, some of their backers balked at calling it a "robot." People wouldn't accept a robot in their homes, they said.

Ten years and more than 6 million sales later, iRobot's Roomba has proved that robots are very welcome. In fact, we can't wait for them to do more than just suck up dirt.

Roomba marks a milestone today, a decade since first rolling off the production line in 2002. In branding the machine, iRobot, a military-robotics company, tried to convey a sense of movement and fun along with "room" to emphasize being at home. The "Roomba" is now in homes around the world. … Read more

Autumn is a-comin' down the track, and with it the whiff of rotting leaves and election promises. Robots can clear away the former now, the latter after the revolution.

iRobot is updating its Looj gutter cleaner, a leaf-churner extraordinaire that reduces the time it takes to unclog your gutters.

If you're not familiar with Looj, it's a portable, waterproof, rotating scrubber on treads. You set it in your eavestrough and it trundles along, spitting out leaves, needles, and other gunk with its spinning rubber flaps. Messy but effective. … Read more

If you like your vacuum-cleaning robots on the fancy side, iRobot's latest addition to the Roomba lineup has a few features that make it easier to use.

The Roomba 790 is part of the 700 series but has a blue faceplate to distinguish it from other models.

The main selling point for the 790 is a radio-frequency remote control that lets you steer Roomba around from almost anywhere in your house (also perfect for when your cat pounces on it), clean specific spots, schedule vacuuming, and order the bot back to its charging station.

For $699.99, you also … Read more

We all crave more interactive, slightly frightening robots, right? It's kinda thrilling. Thank the maker, then, that Sharp is coming out with pricey floor-cleaning droids that can jabber away in three languages.

The voice-controlled Cocorobo can kibitz in English, Chinese, and Japanese, even in the latter's Kansai dialect associated with the city of Osaka. It's the choice of standup comics, so this robot could come across as slightly funnier than, say, a HAL 9000.

Imagine Roomba replying to you with a bit of Texas slang. … Read more

Q: What do you call a vacuum cleaner that doesn't suck?

A: A race car.

That seems to be the refreshingly unexpected answer Dyson's U.K. engineers would provide.

The crew got together earlier this month to shake the dust off with the "Dyson car challenge," a Pinewood Derby of sorts wherein the engineers competed to -- as the company puts it -- "create the fastest go-kart using a few Dyson spare parts and all the torque they could eke out from one of our handheld motors."… Read more

The Roomba robot maker is replacing its Scooba 380 with the 390, a longer-lived floor cleaner with a simplified design. Like previous Scooba models, it can clean sealed hardwood floors, tile, and linoleum surfaces.

Its power management system ensures the machine's battery will operate for 30 percent longer than earlier models, according to iRobot. As with the 380, it can clean 850 square feet per battery charge.

Design improvements include color-coding for parts that users have to maintain, such as the tank, cleaning head, and brush. The device's handle latch is now easier to open.

The 390 can be limited to certain areas of your home with iRobot's Virtual Wall barriers, and will also automatically avoid drop-offs at the top of a flight of stairs. You can see more 300 series behaviors in the PR vid below. … Read more