A couple of years ago, I wrote a post called Never Mind Astro, I Want Rosie, all about Amazon’s new robot helper Astro.
The robot was basically meant to do a few small things around the house, including turning on lights, acting as a security guard, getting you a beer (but not wine, interestingly), and playing with the kids.
At the time I complained that what I REALLY wanted was a robot that could clean my house.
Well, last Christmas, we got one. Kind of.
Our daughter gave us a Roomba.
So here is a short diary of my experiences with our new housekeeper:
Day One
She doesn’t clean the toilet or do the dishes. She doesn’t make my bed. But she DOES vacuum the floors.
Right now I’m watching as Sara (my husband named the Roomba ‘Serenity’, but I’ve shortened it to something that *I* like) is mapping out our ground floor. The cats are petrified. But curious.
They are following Sara around the house, trying to figure out who she is and what she’s doing. Sara is merrily going about her business.
I can almost hear her wondering “What the heck is this? A cat toy? Useless! And it’s in my way!”
Oddly enough I felt like I should clean up and move a lot of things around before she even got started. But I’ve given up. It’s not my job. Is it?
She softly bumps into a chair leg, then tries again, then tries again, before finally figuring out that she’s not going to get past it. So she spins around and tries another way.
We have the advantage of all of our rooms, including our bedroom, being on the main floor, so she’s got a lot to figure out. Now she knows how I feel.
At this point, Sara is 50 minutes into her mapping and has only used up 15% of her power. Not bad.
A little later and at 53% power left, she’s finished mapping.
It’s quite amazing. When we look at the app, she has mapped the whole main floor, with each room correctly named. How did she figure that out??
The REAL question is: can she do as great a job as I can?
9 months later:
After some time with Sara, I’ve decided that she does indeed come in handy. Especially those weeks when I don’t feel like doing anything. When you have cats, you have a lot of cat hair to keep up with.
And she cleans under my bed. Even I don’t go there.
Through the app, we can command her to vacuum even when we’re not at home. I haven’t figured out how to do that myself yet.
But. I’m superior at vacuuming. What can I say? I’ve practiced using a vacuum for years. I know every nook and cranny of my house. That’s because I have a much more advanced map of it in my brain than Sara does.
I can see when I haven’t caught that one little bit of fluff that’s still lying there. I can go over an area if I’m not quite happy with it. Sara isn’t that particular. I know, because sometimes I have to clean up after her.
I don’t need to re-charge. Well, not the way Sara does, anyway. A couple of sips of coffee will do.
And I can dust the furniture. I mean, don’t the two go hand-in-hand? When Sara can figure out how to dust too, I’ll have more respect for her.
The cats are more or less bored by her now. When they hear her little motor rev up, they just move somewhere else to catnap. And she has learned to ignore their toys.
I eagerly anticipate this type of technology becoming more advanced as we get older. A sort of Rosie meets Astro meets Sara thing who can clean the bathroom and vacuum and dust and make my bed.
Oh, and cook too! Yeah, get me one of those.