Coincidentally, I got my Roomba in 2019, and it still works just as new, with less maintenance than described in the article. My problem is that this "just as new" isn't particularly impressive - I'd expect it to be less dumb. It keeps getting lost since it continually redraws the apartment map (hallucinating corridors where there aren't any), it keeps getting stuck etc.
iRobot hasn’t been competitive in the robot vacuum space for many years. Tons of other manufacturers have eclipsed them for less money or more upscale with substantially better features. Roborock, Dreame, Narwal, Eufy, to name a few.
Roombas might be repairable, but if they get stuck constantly and don’t have useful features (eg, self cleaning mops), it’s not particularly useful to me.
I also have a Roomba from around 2019 and it feels kind of like a finished product. I’m not that interested in mopping. Never connected it to the internet. I push the button every few days and empty the trash compartment when it requests to do so. Once a year I give it a thorough clean. Not sure how any device could do better.
For your application they are perfect. Elsewhere they are still much much slower than a human while they could be much much faster.
The floor plan needs to be hard coded. When a new house or office is wired gadgets can be embedded in the walls, floor, doors to get the positioning system accurate to the mm. Movable chairs can also get a bit of electronics, not sure if it even needs power. Larger objects that are moved less frequently can be positioned on its map manually.
It needs an idea how delicate or robust objects are so that it can move extra slow or extra fast.
It needs to know if the bottom of the wall is cleanable and do so.
It should know when to clean then if no one is there race up and down the hallway. If the bottom of the walls and/or doors are cleanable it should know to move faster.
In some industrial applications there should be rails on the wall or floor and possibly rubbers for it to drive into if the floor is slippery.
A combination of large and small cleaning robots would be more effective.
Even if you don’t want mopping, the pathing and speed at which it actually cleans a house vs the ones with LIDAR are comically different. It also has trouble getting itself out of small crevices or tight spaces vs the competition. I know, cause I constantly fought these issues. That’s not even counting for how it will get itself stuck on any cord, toy, etc laying on the ground.
I, too, have an older model (2016 980). It only gets confused when the layout of the room changes during vacuuming (ie. a door closes, a piece of furniture is moved). There was a brief period when its navigation skills were less than stellar, but eventually I figured out that it just needed new wheels (the rubber tires got worn, wheels started slipping and the robot was unable to compensate for that).
The maintenance mentioned in the article is very similar to what I do. Dust bin and filter - daily vacuuming. Front wheel, bottom brushes and side brushes - weekly. Charging contacts and other parts that require disassembly - monthly or less, depending on .
The Roomba is a maintenance friendly robot
Absolutely! The Roombas are very easy to take apart and spare parts are easily obtained (both original and replicas). And boy is that a good thing, because you will be replacing parts quite often if you run your robot daily. ;)
Coincidentally, I got my Roomba in 2019, and it still works just as new, with less maintenance than described in the article. My problem is that this "just as new" isn't particularly impressive - I'd expect it to be less dumb. It keeps getting lost since it continually redraws the apartment map (hallucinating corridors where there aren't any), it keeps getting stuck etc.