DEV Community

Discussion on: I Am Mesmerized By Our New Robotic Vacuum

Collapse
 
ericxw profile image
ericxw

That's interesting because most Roomba vacs have similar algorithms I think but are more expensive. Only higher end roomba will actually remember a map and as I was told, the top end model coming over 1k take a couple of hours mapping.

Check out xiaomi's roborock. We got one recently and did the same thing of following it around. A bit more expensive but uses laser distance sensor to map out a room and continuously map out a room during the cleaning session and can store one map currently. For about an 800sqft space, it cleaned in about 60min time using a third of the battery. Difference for us is I'm working on some major renovations and it's a pretty good test of what it can do. We're pretty impressed so far. One major flaw is when it ends up inside drapes and decides for a while that it has nowhere to go based on laser distance.

Collapse
 
deciduously profile image
Ben Lovy

That's interesting, but I guess it makes sense that most would end up on similar solutions. I'm just still surprised it isn't doing a space-filling zig-zag, but maybe it just can't even bother with absolutely no state stored. It's crazy how steep those get.

That's the second shout-out to that brand, and that sounds pretty clever. Definitely more efficient than whatever this is or isn't doing. I don't think there's another in our future any time soon, but this brand will be my first go-to if/when it does happen.