Will Home Robots Ever Clean Up?

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TR: Along with being affordable, the Roomba is also easy to use. It has a very simple user interface -- basically, an On-Off button, a Clean button, and a Spot Clean button. How much thought went into that?

HG: We had in mind that we needed to keep it very simple. But we actually discovered that our first Roomba wasn't simple enough. It had a small, medium, and large setting for rooms of different sizes. But most people don't know the square footage of their rooms. Now you can put it on "Clean" and the Roomba figures out how big the room is. It just keeps going until it's almost out of battery power. That's a much easier user interface. In fact, having the Roomba be easy to use is one of the big distinguishing factors from any other robot or computer system. You push the button and it does the job.

TR: With those two limiting factors -- price and ease of use -- how much different is the Scooba from the Roomba?

HG: The way the Scooba navigates around a room is very similar, which is great for us; but the actual mechanism, because it deals with fluidics, is completely different. We even had to get down to studying the chemistry of soap. We worked with Clorox to develop a high-traction soap, because putting soap on the floor makes robots slip. You want a robot-friendly cleaning fluid. Then there's dealing with fluids. This robot picks up the debris, lays down the cleaning fluid, scrubs it in, and sucks it up at the back, always keeping the clean and dirty water separate.

TR: As you hone in on the essential functions of home robots and make prices consumer-friendly, the next step seems to be finding tasks for new robots. What other kinds of jobs could future iRobot robots perform?

HG: You can think of commercial cleaning. Every floor in every office, retail chain, and school gets the floors cleaned at night. Also, we have an aging demographic and those people want to remain living more independently in their own homes. So you can think about things like washing windows, cleaning the bathroom, cleaning the toilet, mowing the lawn, shoveling snow, and raking leaves.

Basically, I'd say look at the areas where people don't like to do a job -- and the job doesn't get done as much as the homemaker or the person in charge would like it to get done. That's the place where there's a real consumer need.

TR: Why aren't there more companies bringing out home robots?

HG: I think that bringing all the parts together in one place is a nontrivial matter. Robots are a true integration of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, production engineering, and a real focus on the cost structure and the real needs people have in their homes, or in the military. There might be other companies with a real expertise in robot software. We've assembled a team here that incorporates all of those disciplines, and the team works very much in a customer-focused way.

Home page image courtesy of iRobot.