After much debate, Hiyat came home with two household cleaning robots last week: the Roomba and the Scooba. You can't help but anthropomorphise these guys (we decided that they are males) and they've really helped out around the house.
The Roomba is a vacuuming robot and is the epitome of automation. He comes with a charging base that he finds himself, a timer, and he avoids stairs, walls, and will concentrate on areas that are dirty. He even dusts the baseboards and railings that he can reach. He will wake up at a prescribed time, wander all around the upstairs cleaning and then go and find his charging station underneath the night table when he's tired. He makes it all the way into both kids' rooms and does the bathroom floors too. You won't believe the dust and hair that he's pulled out of the carpets -- it's disgusting. If you put him on area rugs on the main floor he will stay on them and do a good job cleaning them.
The Scooba took a lot more time getting used to. He's a lot less automated than Roomba, without a timer or a base station. This becomes obvious after using him, because unlike the Roomba that only needs electricity, the Scooba needs clean water, cleaning solution, and to have the dirty water dumped out. He does a pretty good job too -- even on the slate. He vacuums, washes, and squeegees up the dirty water all in one go. It's good too, because unlike mopping it actually picks up the dirty water instead of just pushing it around.
Overall, I'm pretty impressed with this pair. They really help keep the house clean, which we don't always have time to do now that we have 3 kids. I'll start Scooba on the main floor and Roomba up on either the basement or the area rugs on the main floor (he would have already done the upstairs that morning) when we put the kids in the tub and by the time we're done we have clean floors througout the house. Very good labour saving devices even though there a bit on the pricy side at $5
http://www.irobot.com/
