scooba

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

LAS VEGAS--iRobot demoed its updated line of robot floor cleaners at CES 2011, showing off a more powerful Roomba vacuum bot and a much more compact Scooba floor scrubber.

Roomba hoovered some crushed Cheerios, while Scooba got to work on a coffee-stained tile floor. Both robots go on sale this spring. They're similar to their predecessors, but have important differences.

Both updates have the iAdapt cleaning tech, a sensor and software system that monitors the floor more than 60 times per second and chooses from dozens of robot behaviors to get the job done, the company says.

I played around with the Scooba 350 last year, and wasn't crazy about its bulk, which proved a bit of a pain when emptying the cleaning fluid tanks.

At only 6.5 inches across and 3.5 inches tall, the new Scooba 230 has a much smaller footprint, making maintenance easier, and it can be grabbed with one hand. The new size, however, is mainly designed to allow the robot to get into tight corners around toilets, which was never a delightful chore anyway.

The 230 can scrub up to 150 square feet of sealed hardwood, tile, or linoleum floors, and has edge-detect sensors to keep it away from stairs and drop-offs while working. The company says it can neutralize up to 97 percent of common household bacteria.

A neat feature is how the reservoirs work: An active reservoir system separates the cleaning solution from the dirty water. The active reservoir shrinks as more cleaning fluid is put down on the floor, allowing it to suck up more dirty water. iRobot says this eliminates dirty water from the cleaning area so the robot isn't just moving dirt around like a mop can. … Read more

People who hate housework will soon have two more robots to handle the chores.

iRobot this week will unveil the Scooba 230 floor washer and the next-generation Roomba 700 series of vacuums.

iRobot already has a line of Scooba floor washers, but the company is touting the Scooba 230 as a leaner cleaner. At 3.5 inches high and 6.5 inches wide, the 230 is geared to squeeze into tight places, such as underneath furniture and around bathroom fixtures. The 230 holds enough cleaning fluid to take care of 150 square feet of space in one session, iRobot said.… Read more

It's the 21st century, and robots are supposed to be doing everything for us now. As with personal jet packs, that hasn't happened. But Evolution Robotics' Mint is one of a number of floor-cleaning robots designed to lighten the housework load.

Announced at CES earlier this year and shipping this fall, Mint is an automatic floor cleaner--not a vacuum like iRobot's Roomba. You put a wet or dry dust cloth on the removable cleaning pad, push a button, and Mint gets to work.

Mint is somewhat comparable to low-cost dusting robots like the $50 RoboMop, but at $249 it's almost in the same league as more sophisticated floor-washing machines like iRobot's Scooba. Scooba retails for $299 and up, and has been on the market for nearly five years.

I happened to have a Scooba 350 at home, so when I got my hands on a Mint, I decided to compare the bots' performance on my hardwood and tile floors. They're two very different machines, but let's see how they stack up. … Read more

Evolution Robotics is introducing an automatic floor cleaner for hard surfaces that can get those tricky spots like corners, edges, and places under furniture.

The Mint robot mop and duster being introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show uses disposable or reusable cleaning cloths to get the job done. You put a Swiffer or Pledge cloth on the bottom, push a button, and off it goes.

The dry cloths trap dirt and dust. When set to mop mode and given a wet cloth, Mint does a back-and-forth movement to scrub floors.

The sexy, compact machine uses Evolution Robotics' NorthStar navigation technology. … Read more

BERLIN--In the midst of America's raging debate on the future of health insurance, one man says he has a solution to out-of-control health care costs: more robots.

Of course, this is coming from Colin Angle, a roboticist and CEO of iRobot, the company that makes both robotic vacuum cleaners and bomb-defusing gadgets currently in use by the U.S. military. At IFA here on Friday, he said that robotic telepresence devices, which would act like nurses in a person's home, could reduce the $2.2 trillion, or 17 percent of the U.S. GDP, currently spent on health … Read more

iRobot is offering deep discounts on its home products if you buy directly from its Web site.

We're wondering why, and it comes down to two possibilities, really.

One, they have newer, brighter, shinier models in the pipeline and need to unload old stock. Or, two, they're simply trying to get a head start on the holiday-season discounts expected from retailers, given the state of the economy.

Most recently, iRobot sent an e-mail letting people know it's offering $50 off its Scooba 380 model if you buy it before October 24. It normally sells for $450. That … Read more

When the iRobot Scooba first came out a couple years ago, I remember thinking, "Dang, that's just the kind of floor-sweeping/vacuuming/mopping gizmo we could use here at Camp Cheapskate" (which tends to be a messy place). But then I saw the $400 price tag and grudgingly reached for my trusty old broom.

Well, proof positive that good things come to those who wait, Woot has the Scooba for just $99, plus a very fair $5 for shipping. However, as with all Woot.com deals, it's today (Black Friday) only, and when they're gone, … Read more

iRobot pretty much has both ends of the robot spectrum covered: cute, household cleaning robots and industrial-strength military robots. Monday's announcement that iRobot and Boeing will team up on a military/civilian/commercial robot falls somewhere in the middle.

The Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle, nicknamed SUGV Early, will weigh less than 30 pounds. That's smaller than iRobot's line of robots currently in use in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts to search buildings, caves and tunnels and disarm Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).

The SUGV Early will perform reconaissance and gather intelligence while operators stand out of harm's … Read more