I did something remarkable today. I bought a robot.
What I really did was entirely non-remarkable: I walked into a store, laid down a credit card, and came home with a consumer electronic product in a glossy, four-color box. What made it remarkable was that what was in the box was just an appliance — and it really is a robot.
The Roomba, by iRobot is a home vacuum cleaner that wanders around the house, vacuuming everything in its robotic path. To most people, the Roomba looks like a meld between a vacuum cleaner and a bumper car, aimlessly wandering the room and and brainlessly switching direction when it hits a wall. But what fascinates me is that there is a great deal of design intelligence.
Watch the Roomba for a little while and one begins to notice behaviors. For instance, when it hits an object, it explores it with a series of small turns and nudges. It can distinguish a corner from a table leg and once it knows it's a leg, it does a tight right turn all the way around it, so that it's edge-cleaning, spinning brush can clean effectively around it. I read online that many Roomba owners — and they have sold 1-1/2 million — find it fascinating to watch and notice new subtleties in its behavior, much as we might watch animals in the wild and notice new things we hadn't seen before, that give us hints as to the inner workings of their minds and their development. It's surprisingly interesting to watch.
Someone (I can't remember who) talked about how you can tell a technology has matured when it becomes invisible. I will let the technologists argue about the definition of intelligence and what defines a device as a robot. But for me, the Roomba turns a corner in hiding a surprising degree of sophistication in a home appliance.
Some people have gone so far as name their Roomba. Some dress them up (really). I am just going to watch. I'll let you know what I see.
Update: Since this posting, I have added articles with a review of the product, how to tinker with it, where to get good deals. See note below.
Disclosure: I also bought stock in iRobot, the company that makes the Roomba, because it's a neat product and the company seems like it has clever people. I am a crappy investor though, so please don't take this as advice! Just wanting to disclose that I have stock.
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Note: This is one of several articles here on the Roomba. Use the search at http://feedme.typepad.com/ and search for "Roomba."
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