iRobot Introduces the Scooba

Posted 26 May 2005 at 00:04 UTC by steve

The Scooba does for mopping the floor what the Roomba did for vacuuming. Or that's what iRobot hopes according to recent CNN Money and PC Magazine articles. The best quote is from the CNN article which says the Scooba "sucks up the excess water and stores it to be dumped later using artificial intelligence". Wow, I would have thought they'd use a vacuum or a pump of some kind to suck up water but apparently AI does the job just as well. For the real technical details on the Scooba visit the iRobot Scooba Preview page.

AI helps it to take a dump?, posted 26 May 2005 at 12:30 UTC by The Swirling Brain » (Master)

"sucks up the excess water and stores it to be dumped later using artificial intelligence".

[my take on this sentence]

So... when iScooba fills up with liquids, its AI kicks in, first of all crossing it's legs and bouncing it up and down emitting slight squeals and then the AI helps it to run around searching and "holding" for the right moment until it can find a IR beaconed marking tree in the bathroom to dump it's contents? Now isn't that a releif? Seeing that the iScooba is so accurate it would probably only need a Pea (sp?) sized toilet? What if instead of finding the IR beaconed tree it finds your leg instead and then dumps its contents? That would really suck.

How does it know?, posted 27 May 2005 at 02:23 UTC by jeffkoenig » (Master)

Does it have some kind of sensor to detect moppable (tile, sealed hardwood, concrete) and non-moppable (Berber carpet, Oriental rug) surfaces?

Forget the AI. If I can teach it to enter the cubicle of a co-worker, announce itself, slowly empty the contents of its robo-bladder (maybe while saying "Ahhhhhhhhhhh!") and then split, I'll buy one.

I'll keep it right next to Clocky.