Thursday 3rd June 2010

Samsung NaviBot robot vacuum cleaner

What's wrong with the idea of putting your feet up and letting someone else do the cleaning? Or even letting some THING else do it?

For our Consumer Technology Review this week, Ciaran O'Byrne practised being lazy and let a robot vacuum cleaner tackle the carpets.

What is the machine you have been testing?

I've been having fun watching the Samsung NaviBot do the cleaning, and it's fair to say I've never had so much fun doing the vacuuming or not doing it in this case.

It's only been out a couple of months and is only out in Ireland now, and is an impressive advance on earlier attempts by other manufacturers.

What it is, is a flattish circular three wheeled robot with horizontally rotating brushes at the front a bit like a road sweeper, that flick hair and fluff in under the centre of the robot's belly where a cylindrical brush scoops up the dirt.

I've heard it described as being like a slice of a Dalek, and that's a pretty good description.

It's 355mm wide and 93mm tall, circular, (which is about 14 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches tall) with a touch screen control panel, a computer brain and a camera.

How does it make it's way around the room?

It has a mapping system which is run by two processing chips in it, and this combined with the integrated camera, allows it to see your home and plot out the most efficient path for cleaning. It's also supposed to remember where objects are, and where it has been, so that it doesn't waste time cleaning the same patch of floor twice.

It has 38 sensors which help prevent it from bumping into things, and 3 cliff sensors so it won't fall down the stairs - and despite my thorough attempts it would head towards the top of the stairs and then right at the edge it would cop on to what was about to happen to it and lurch backwards.

It's also pretty good at traversing the floor and moving from carpet to hard wood floor and up onto rugs and down again. It's three wheels kept it moving, and even when I thought it had beached itself, it spun around and reversed and plotted a new course around the armchair and off down the other end of the room.

When it has plotted the floor plan it tends to head off at a right angle to the wall and wants to do a straight line, and if it has to move around something, it picks up it's route on the other side of the obstacle. It keeps all of this in it's memory and remembers what parts of the floor it has done.

Can you leave it alone or do you have to keep an eye on it?

It's pretty much autonomous, which is the fascinating thing about it. I literally put my feet up on the sofa, watched the news, while the NaviBot whirred away on the floor, it's a bit noisy, but it disappeared under the sofa and got quiter, and then wandered off into the kitchen and into the hallway, which is where the "Smart Gates" come in handy, these are laser fences to prevent it from leaving a room, or to stop it from leaving the room until it has clean all of the floor. Or the laser can be placed in front of an object or area to prevent the NaviBot from going there.

There are also some other modes such as "Max Mode", which makes the robot clean the floor twice, if it needs a thorough job, and "Spot Mode" where it will concentrate on the square metre you place it on.

Also when it realises it's batteries are running low it heads back to it's charging station, which is a snug unit that it drives onto and charges itself. It's takes about an hour to fully charge and will give you around 90 mins of running time.

After all that clever technology, does it do a good cleaning job on the floor?

Well it won't clean every inch of your floor, and it doesn't pretend to. The manual has a little cartoon of someone using a conventional vacuum cleaner to finish off behind the sofa. It does manage to pick up hair, fluff, little bits of paper and so on - every day stuff, although it does have some vacuum power, it's not as strong as a regular vacuum, it's more in the line of a carpet sweeper.

It's not so great on a hard wood or tile floor but if you have a fairly big carpeted room that doesn't have too many chair legs or table legs, then it can clean up fairly well, although it takes a lot longer than you would do it yourself. But the other beauty of it is that you can programme it to do the floor cleaning while you are out.

Is it costly?

Yep, it will cost you €499, (and is available from the likes of DID Electric right now) which is a lot, although Dyson vacuum cleaners can cost from €150 to €450, and you have to push them yourself, although they have very different properties, some clean the air as they vacuum, and are very powerful.

All in all, I loved having a robot in the house to do some domestic chores - it's science fiction on the floor, but while it is very clever, I think I'd wait for the next generation, which will get the corners clean as well, and for the price to come down. I'll miss it when it's gone, not just because it was like a little pet, but it means I'll have to get the hoover out...