Althought I own an earlier model Roomba, I've stopped recommending Roomba robots. I do not wish to support the financial interests of a firm that invests in robotic killing machines for the U.S. military. Robots should be built for peaceful purposes: cleaning your house, mowing your lawn, entertaining your guests, and so on. They should not be used as killing machines, nor to aid a wartime aggressor in being a more efficient killing machine. IRobot's claim that Roomba uses technology to seek out and destroy dirt in your home -- just like a minesweeper -- is just too much for me to stomach. I don't need a war in my living room, even if it's only the, "War on Dirt."
This is an issue of robotics ethics, and roboethicists actually deal with these questions on a regular basis. In my view, Japan demonstrates the correct focus for robotics technology: peaceful, helpful, social robots that improve the quality of our lives. The U.S., in contrast, wants to make robots that destroy life. That's what the recent Pentagon-sponsored Robot Race was all about, by the way: handing out a bag of prize money to the company that could build the most efficient battlefield navigation robot. It's only use, of course, is to ultimately kill enemy combatants, which all too often includes innocent civilians. And IRobot, the company that makes Roomba, is marching right along with the U.S. military by providing the technology that could someday make robotic soldiers a reality. Two thumbs down to IRobot.
The newest generation of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner has learned how to charge itself at a docking station, detect the best cleaning pattern for a given room, and seek out dirt particles the size of finely ground pepper.
"I sound like a vacuum-cleaner salesman," says Colin Angle, chief executive officer of IRobot, while demonstrating the cleaning techniques of the new Roomba Discovery product.
Roomba Discovery made quick work of a pile of dirt on the floor of a small, crowded conference room that hadn't been vacuumed in several days.
Previous generations of the device would clean until they ran out of power, leaving users to discover the robot beeping insistently in odd places around their homes.