Digital Well Being

Roomba

The iRobot Roomba Vacuuming Robot cleans hardwood floors and carpets at the touch of a button. The robot detects dirt under furniture, avoids stairs and automatically returns to its docking station to recharge.

The most interesting thing about is its ability to get around in any home on its own and clean well. This was thought to be impossible at such a low cost. So the combination of very inexpensive sensors made effective by very clever design, the multithreaded operating system running on very a very small microprocessor, and the really low power sweeper/vac. Also, The Discovery has a 16-bit microprocessor and flash memory.
The Discoveries make a lot of improvement in the cleaning, lifetime, quick charge, and dirt storage, but the most compelling are the new robotic features. These guys actually know when they are picking up dirt and change the cleaning pattern to pick it up more efficiently. The coolest though is the home base station. The robot actually knows it is running low on juice and starts looking for its charger. When it sees the infrared lobes that the base station transmits, it gets lined up, then like under control of a tractor beam it heads into the dock and starts a recharging cycle. The first model that has this cost 249.99 but the other new model are compatible with the recharger accessory, which can be bought separately.