<story><title>Roomba Inventor Joe Jones on His New Weed-Killing Robot</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/roomba-inventor-joe-jones-on-weed-killing-robot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fragsworth</author><text>As a Roomba owner, I have to say that I&amp;#x27;m not really impressed with their decision to make another product when their first one barely even works.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Some 15 million of them are cleaning floors all over the planet, and they’re doing so reliably and affordably and autonomously enough that people keep on buying them&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely not &amp;quot;reliable&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;barely&lt;/i&gt; better than cleaning the floor myself. Some days, cleaning the floor myself would actually be easier, or ends up being what I have to do anyway. The number of issues I&amp;#x27;ve run into with the damned thing is absurd and I feel like they should be fixing those before making a new product.&lt;p&gt;I think people are for the most part getting tricked into buying these. They&amp;#x27;re not that great.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>secure</author><text>I’ve had a Roomba 780 cleaning my apartment daily since 2013. Issues I’ve encountered so far:&lt;p&gt;1. It occasionally doesn’t properly return to the home base, because it’s hard to find a good place for the home base where it can’t be moved&amp;#x2F;knocked over accidentally. This happens maybe once every 2 or 3 weeks, and is just a mild annoyance: you just need to carry the Roomba to its home base yourself.&lt;p&gt;2. After 3 years of usage, the battery died in such a way that it emptied rapidly enough for the Roomba to not be able to return to the home base. This was easily fixed by installing a new battery.&lt;p&gt;I recently upgraded to the Roomba 980, and it seems to work better than the 780 — it cleans more quickly and returns to its home base more reliably. Also, less cleaning required due to a different brush design.&lt;p&gt;Overall, I feel that I’m definitely getting my money’s worth out of the product, and it’s doing a great job at vacuuming. YMMV, but for me, it’s great.</text></comment>
<story><title>Roomba Inventor Joe Jones on His New Weed-Killing Robot</title><url>http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/home-robots/roomba-inventor-joe-jones-on-weed-killing-robot</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fragsworth</author><text>As a Roomba owner, I have to say that I&amp;#x27;m not really impressed with their decision to make another product when their first one barely even works.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;Some 15 million of them are cleaning floors all over the planet, and they’re doing so reliably and affordably and autonomously enough that people keep on buying them&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely not &amp;quot;reliable&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;barely&lt;/i&gt; better than cleaning the floor myself. Some days, cleaning the floor myself would actually be easier, or ends up being what I have to do anyway. The number of issues I&amp;#x27;ve run into with the damned thing is absurd and I feel like they should be fixing those before making a new product.&lt;p&gt;I think people are for the most part getting tricked into buying these. They&amp;#x27;re not that great.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>koonsolo</author><text>I like my Roomba, as the way I like my dishwasher.&lt;p&gt;Can I personally clean the foors better? Yes. Can I personally clean my dishes better? Yes. Dishwasher sometimes turns things upside down, doesn&amp;#x27;t clean properly etc.&lt;p&gt;But the main reason is that it saves me a lot of time, and it&amp;#x27;s good enough for me. Maybe not for you.</text></comment>