Robotic Blogs

Roomba maker iRobot has introduced a new household robot, the Looj, made for cleaning rain gutters.

You just drop the small Looj into you gutter and it "augers" it way through and ejects the crappy buildup out and away. Just in time for the fall season.

The price range from US $100 to $170 depending on the options you get. Available now from the iRobot web store. I would guess that it will be available in suburban Home Depots soon. And also available to clear the rain gutters in your third world countries.


I like the belt holster. I can help you to climb the ladder sure, but also wearing it around the yard would make you the coolest guy in the 'hood.

iRobot Corporation: About Looj

Home vacuum robot maker iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT)has launched two new pool-cleaner robots for home use.
The two robots, Verro 300 and Verro 600, are available now for $800 and $1200.
The 300 model uses water jet and vacuum to suck up debris from the pool. The Verro 600 uses brushes along with the vacuum and filter.

Drop the robot into the water and it will clean the pool in 60 to 90 minutes. The robots require a power umbilical plugged in but do not need any hose connection to the pool's pump.
They will also not gawk at your sunbathing teenage daughter.

Will pool robots put pool service companies out of business? No. There is a lot more to maintaining a pool than sweeping up the leaves.

Pool cleaning robots are not new by any means.
iRobot worked with the Aqua Products Group companies to develop their robots.
Another maker of pool cleaner robots is Maytronics in Isreal.


iRobot Corporation: Press Release

One would think that the next step in home robot development would be to add more features to the vacuum cleaner. In a surprising turn, iRobot has chosen to remove capabilities from their machine.

iRobot launched their latest home robot today aimed at schools and robot developers called the Create.

The Create is basically a Roomba with all the vacuuming guts removed. It has a bunch of sensors (32), is programmable with a pc and has an open interface for adding more sensors or features - like arms, paint sprayer, baby monitor, weaponry, etc

For $129 it is ready to roll right out of the box. It looks like you also need a command module to make it fully programmable for another $60 or get both in a package.

They also offer the robot, command module and battery charger for $229 which looks like a good deal to me.

They are also offering a ten-pack for $999 for classrooms, teams or dance troupes.
They are available from the iRobot website.

Although this probably will not add much to the iRobot bottom line, I think the low price of the robot and high visibility of iRobot will make it very popular.

Give it a few months for the units to get out there and people to come up with uses for them. I think we will be seeing more of these in the news.
This may not be it, yet. But one day someone will come up with the 'Apple Macintosh' of home robots.

iRobot Corporation: Press Release

Update:
More information over at Robot Stock News. Thorn agrees with me that the $229 kit is what you need to get started.

Smiths Detection, part of the global engineering business Smiths Group, has been selected by the US Army’s Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center to supply the Lightweight Chemical Detector (LCD)for use with a new advanced reconnaissance robot.

The LCD is fitted to an iRobot PackBot robot. The LCD can detect a wide range of chemical warfare agents including nerve, blister, blood and choking agents.

The new robots, which will be known as the CBRN Unmanned Ground Vehicle or CUGV, recently completed technical demonstrations at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Smiths Detection Press Release