Is Roomba Really Intelligent?

krkeegan · Guest

First off let me say I am a big fan of Roomba. The only major draw back that I see is that instead of letting it run while I am not at home I am fascinated with watching it.

But in response to another comment about hacking into a roomba and getting the info about what it thinks the room looks like.

I think roomba has a series of programs and subroutines that are designed to make it appear that roomba knows where it is. I think these work very well and enable it to clean with better efficiency. However I don't think it can determine what a room looks like or even where it is in the room. My biggest reason for this is that it would have no way of knowing if a wheel slipped or if something in the room changed.

I tested my theory by opening a door on a small room after 15 minutes. I did not notice roomba act any differently it did not continue past the door because it presumed it to still be there.

Don't get me wrong I think the programming is very smart, but I think it is a collection of subroutines that are desinged to cover the entire room while still in fact being random.

Kevin

Rick · Guest

Your correct, the Roomba does not have room mapping capabilities.

The Roomba uses various algorithms to 'guesstimate' the size of the room it is cleaning and it does factor in the amount of times it has hit walls when in determining how long and where to clean, but it is all based on probability.

Only the Electrolux Trilobite currently has room mapping, but it costs $1,800, so I think all in all the Roomba approach is good enough for me!

Rick