“The Bloodhound won’t fit on the sofa? That’s not what the vacuum cleaner says.”
She parked it at my desk, saying it was mine to work out. I approached it the same way I do every other project not my own: I neglected it. My wife is not the nagging type, and Death Valley brain pushed her off in other directions, so no rumba for the Roomba.
When we were packing up, I thought, “I should sell this thing” – but we ended up moving it anyway.
And: I have been vacuuming a lot at the new house. Tile floors betray what carpets conceal: Desert air, at least at around shoe level, is full of grit.
And so that Roomba was suddenly much more interesting to me. I don’t mind vacuuming, and I like any job where I can tell the difference when I’m done. But: Scutwork is never first on my list – except my list of jobs to delegate.
Enter Rosie, named after The Jetsons’ housekeeper, who swept away the grit in two short shifts yesterday and is gamely sucking up dust right now. She was duck soup to set up, with a little extra thought devoted to preventing her from becoming beached by her own enthusiasm.
Rosie is hyper-diligent, but she is dumb, dumb, dumb. The “artificial intelligence” is a variation on the drunkard’s walk – that is to say, nothing anyone would even loosely describe as intelligence. If the iRobot people are selling data from this relationship, I cannot imagine what it is. This device – a Roomba 690 – is definitely not mapping the house.
It could be – it must have a Cartesian relationship with its home base – and, accordingly, it could be much more intelligent in its approach to vacuuming. Vide: Map the perimeter, then work that map by segments, lawnmower style. That would make most-efficient use of Rosie’s battery. Or: Keep records of where significant “dirt events” occur and give those identified high-traffic areas extra attention.
I think what this device does best is upsell the better ones: Actually-optimized performance with better self-maintenance.
Even so: I’m sold. We have Rosie scheduled to grab that grit every night, while we slumber. If she gets hung up, as she did overnight, I can set matters right when I get up to fend off the dawning.
Rosie is a dumbass, and her pricier, smarter sister is, too. But she’s a worker, and she goes where ordinary vacuums can’t. She was mine to work out, and we worked things out yesterday.
In other news:
The New York Post: This is currently the most anxious city in the US.
