Cleaning Robots
The Perfect Team

I introduced briefly the cleaning robots in the home robots page. But I wanted to show what a complete team could look like, see how much it would cost and what job would be left to do for you.

So let's start!

1) Roomba vacuum cleaner

The most common home robot is certainly the iRobot Roomba. It will vacuum your rooms in your absence without much need for care from you, as long as you adapt your house a little. For your robot vacuum cleaner to work well, avoid cats and dogs (or be prepared for a little more maintenance), and tidy your room regularly. It will charge by itself, and can work on a schedule when you're out. Other than that, you'll have to empty its trunk from time to time and check its brushes a little, but it's nothing compared to the task of using the vacuum cleaner or the broom every few days.

This first cleaning robot will cost you between 200 and 600 USD, depending on your choice. The most popular ones being around 320 USD (like the cheaper Roombas).
Click here for my pages on the iRobot Roomba vacuum.

2) Your hard floor cleaner

The Scooba floor washer is basically like a Roomba, but instead of vacuuming the dust, it washes the floor with a cleaning solution, and then vacuum it back to leave the floor nearly dry. It does seem to be less popular than the Roomba vacuum cleaner in the reviews, mainly because of poor duration. For its price, you do want to use it more than one year! It will cost you between 300 and 500 USD. Still most people are happy with it so it's not all bad.
Find more here about the Scooba robot floor scrubber.

You can go for the The Mint Evolution robot instead, that will mop the floor with the good old disposable dust clothes. And by the way, it can dust and clean your floor at the same time, but it doesn't clean your carpets. It's only 200 USD and has had a good launch in 2010.

With your Roomba vacuum cleaner + a robot floor washer, you should have enough to clean the floor inside your house. Next is to take care of your pets and outside. But if you have no pets and live in an apartment, I guess you can skip.
Click here if you want to return the Home Robots main page.

3) For pet owners: the litter robot

You, pet owner, I told you a robot vacuum cleaner may not be as efficient in your home, and you were sad. And even though iRobot made the Roomba Pet Series especially for you, it is still no real solution for your perfect cleaning robots.

But here is the good news! The litter robot will allow you to forget the smell and dirty duty of washing after your cat(s). The litter robot sense when the cat leaves the box, and then rotate to skillfully take away the wastes without taking away all the litter. All you have left to do is take the wastes from the drawer every week, and change the litter once in a while. This cleaning robot is a real solution for the cat owners living in apartments.

I hope this special robot makes you feel better. It does cost 350 USD, though. It's 10 times more than a simple box. So it may be more profitable if you have several cats at home.
More on the Cat Litter Robot LRII here.

4) The pool cleaning robots

Do you own a pool? If you do... Please invite me! Hum... Sorry. I mean, you are very lucky. But actually, you are less lucky than, say, your kids or your friends. They can enjoy swimming without even knowing how much work it is to take care of all the leaves and pollution.

That was before all before they invented the pool cleaning robots. These robots are like little carts that crawl at the bottom of your pool. They suck up the water under them, filter all the leaves and dirt that is inside and spit back the clean water. It cleans efficiently and lets you save on the main pool filter, since they filter dust down to 10 micrometers.

The prices range from 300 USD to 1500 USD. iRobot propose the Verro pool cleaning robots, but it's not the favorite on Amazon. It seems the Polaris Vac Sweep and the Aquabot Pool Rover Jr. share the best popularity. Both are under 400 USD.

5) What's next?

Now you see that all the cleaning robots you can really have are only for cleaning the floor, only the litter robot cleans after your cat. It takes away a lot of work already, but there is always more you have to do. Who is going to wash your windows? What about my dishes? I hate washing dishes!

For the short term, there is the Korean Household Robot Windoro that wants to help you with your windows. It's actually a double robot: one on each side of your window. If you have a fish tank, you know how it works. But in my opinion it looks mainly useful for shop-windows, big veranda and tall glass buildings. But let's give it a chance, and wait and see.

For the long term, inspiration will surely come from the Electrolux Design Lab contest. Each year they challenge university students to come with the household robots and appliances of the future. Here are some of their greatest ideas for future (before 2020?) cleaning robots.

Your new dish washer: feed it with rests

Robot Vacuum Cleaner new generation?

Will you let it wash your bath?

These three pictures come from the Electrolux Media Lab on Flickr.

Other pages that may interest you:

Why should you get a robot floor cleaner? This page gives you 3 tips on how home robots can make your life easier.

Learn about the litter robot. It is the perfect robot for cat owners who want to get rid of litter box chore.

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