Robots Roomba

Forlizzi, J. and DiSalvo, C. 2006. Service robots in the domestic environment A study of the Roomba vacuum in the home. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCHI/SIGART Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, HRI 06, Salt Lake City, 2-4 March, 258-256. New York ACM. 

Asking appropriate questions can also stimulate conceptual adaptation. For example, we are working on the development of a new type of a vacuum cleaner. One of the participants has brought to our brainstorming session a recently developed Roomba 880 vacuum cleaner, which is a robotic device and is considered to be one of the most advanced vacuum cleaners on the market. Several US patents protect its design, but we still may adapt some of its ideas without violating US patent laws. Here we have examples of questions ... 

FIGURE 17-1 Roomba by iRobot was the first widely sold functional personal robot. 

The Roomba robot featured in the opening of this chapter is capable of vacuuming several rooms of your house. 

Robots are often a combination of electrical motors and fluid power (either pneumatic or hydraulic). Most industrial robots are connected to an electrical supply because they are stationary. Robots on wheels must have batteries. The Robomower and Roomba robots described earlier have batteries. When the batteries begin to run low, their program has them return to their base for charging. The NASA robots used to explore Mars had to have powerful batteries that could be recharged from solar panels. 

Roomba, a robotic vacuum cleaner, appeals so weU to users emotions (through features such as cute chirping alert noises when the robot finds itself stuck in a corner) that many people find themselves naming and talking to their robots. 

A system s behavior may be represented by more than one of these descriptions. A domestic example of such a system, iRobot s Roomba line of robotic vacuum cleaners, illustrates how prosaic automation and autonomy have become. The Roomba must navigate a house full of obstacles while ensuring that the carpet is cleaned—a challenging task for a consumer product. We can evaluate the Roomba s characteristics using the definitions given above ... 

---