I can haz robot

I’m pretty late to the party because I know a number of people that have had these for a few years now, but after seeing a newer model in action that a friend got for Christmas, I decided to check out the iRobot Roomba 540 vacuuming robot which is apparently a model unique to Costco:

iRobot Roomba 540 from John Biehler on Vimeo.

Of course, I had to name him “R2″ although he kinda looks like the Millennium Falcon.

I was a little skeptical about how well he would work but he did a pretty amazing job of cleaning up the dust bunnies in all corners of my main floor (kitchen, living and dining rooms). Considering the floor was just cleaned, we were surprised how much crud he picked up. His dirt hopper was full. He had no trouble navigating the transitions between the hardwood, rug and tile flooring.

I had asked a friend how good they clean and his comment was that using them is better than not cleaning at all (um, guilty) and if done regularly they do a great job of cleaning up the floor. It’s easily half as noisy as our upright vacuum and is kind of entertaining to watch it work which is better than lugging the upright around or constantly swiffering the floor.