Scooba Blog

Lance Ulanoff from PC Magazine has a review of the Scooba that you can read here

I’ve been worried about the noise after watching the online videos, but Lance says it’s not too bad.

The Scooba’s 80-dB whirring is louder than the slosh of a mop, but not annoying.

On getting stuck:

I also had to move my virtual wall halfway through because the Scooba, just like its brother Roomba did, got stuck under my hutch. Oddly, it never stopped trying to clean and the “I’m stuck” light never came one, but make no mistake—it was stuck. I pulled it out, turned the robot around, and then, to prevent the Scooba from rolling under the hutch again, I put the virtual wall in front of it. I used some furniture to block the den entrance. The Scooba really should ship with two virtual walls.

On cleaning the Scooba:

The brush chassis slides out sideways and then comes apart so you can clean the brush. The wire mesh filter and rubber vacuum port slide out; cleaning them is a matter of dumping out the dirt. But cleaning the roller takes time. I also had to wipe down the Scooba’s bottom. Part of it was covered with wet dirt, including the edges of the squeegee.

Edward Baig from USA Today got to play around with a final engineering prototype of the scooba. Read his article here

A few points:

Though it cleaned admirably, Scooba missed a few spots in my kitchen. It won’t eliminate deep scuff marks, and it failed to fully remove a red cupcake icing stain.

A couple of times, Scooba’s “I’m stuck” button lit up accompanied by error codes. One code indicated I needed to inspect the wheels. Scooba also got stuck under a cabinet. It fought to escape, but I finally had to jerk it out.

I think Time is the first to give an initial review of the Scooba (someone correct me if i’m wrong). Anyhow, here it is.

It looks like the device works well:

..it managed to cover every inch of the kitchen floor in that time [20 minutes]. The linoleum that had been greasy and sticky, with the occasional crusted food spot, was buffed to a smart shine.

Something new to me:

They also suggest that, if you’re out of the solution, running the Scooba with plain water will work to at least some extent.

I’d be interested in comparing the cleaning results with solution compared to without!

On battery life:

The Scooba cleans up to 200 square feet on a single tank of cleaner in an estimated run time of around 45 minutes. Its battery lasts a little longer than that, but only a little…

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, been a little busy.

From Yahoo News:

iRobot Corp today announced the iRobot Scooba Floor Washing Robot has been honored with the International Consumer Electronic Showcase (CES) “Best of Innovations Design and Engineering” Award in the Home Appliance category. Scooba is the first floor washing robot available for home use. The robot was selected as a winner from a pool of more than 1,000 entries from 164 companies.
….
“This marks the second year in a row that CES recognized an iRobot product as one of its most innovative technologies,” said Greg White, executive vice president and general manager, iRobot. “The Scooba builds on the success of the Roomba Vacuuming Robot, taking the utility of home robots to a new level.”

I received an email from Ted (thanks!) about the shipping on preorders:

So the early preorders were being charged shipping, even though the
email said they wouldn’t. I contacted customer service, they said it
would be fixed (of course).

They also sent out an email today apologizing for the site troubles at
the scooba store.

From Business Wire:

Robot Corp. today announced that the iRobot Scooba(R) Floor Washing Robot has been honored with a Popular Science “Best of What’s New” Award in the Home Technology category. Scooba is the first floor washing robot designed for home use.

Each year, the editors of Popular Science select the top 100 technology innovations of the year for the “Best of What’s New” awards. These products represent a significant leap in their categories.

“‘Best of What’s New’ is the ultimate Popular Science accolade, representing a year’s worth of work evaluating thousands of products,” says Mark Jannot, editor of Popular Science. “These awards honor innovations that not only influence the way we live today, but that change the way we think about the future.”

Here is the official “Best of What’s New” page. Scooba is listed under ‘Home Tech’. The ‘Grand Award’ in that category was given to a piece of wood

Thanks to Ted for pointing out that the Scooba is available for preorder on the official iRobot Store.

In big bold red letters it states “Allow 8-10 weeks for delivery”, so don’t expect on getting it any time soon

A quick search on Amazon.com and nothing about the Scooba comes up. It’s understandable that the official store gets this exclusive preorder, but I expect soon some of the other big retailers will be offering it.

iRobot Corp set it’s IPO at 4.3M common shares at an estimated price of between $21 and $23 a share. About 3.26 million shares will be available to the public, and 1.04 million shares will be sold by some shareholders.

Sounds like our favorite little company is growing Hopefully they put a lot of the money raised towards R&D!

I decided to make a section on Scooba competitors. My plan is to provide news about other floor cleaning robots, like the Orazio.

here is the official description of the product, listing features, technical specifications, etc.

It offers five different cleaning programs, which I beleive all have different settings that you can specify.

• Continuous Vacuuming
  Continuous vacuum cycle, without the use of detergents or cloths. Carpets are recognized as an obstacle according to the setting specified in programming (carpet cleaning percentage).
• Dry cloth
  Cleaning cycle with cloth, without the use of water or vacuuming. Carpets are considered obstacles and therefore avoided.
• Wet cloth
  Cleaning cycle with cloth moistened with detergent solutions. Carpets are considered obstacles and therefore avoided.
• Dry cloth with vacuuming
  Cleaning cycle with cloth, without the use of water. When the appliance encounters an obstacle, it reverses and activates vacuuming for five seconds. Carpets are recognized as an obstacle according to the setting specified in programming (carpet cleaning percentage).
• Wet cloth with vacuuming
  Cleaning cycle with cloth moistened with detergent solutions. When the appliance encounters an obstacle, it reverses and activates vacuuming for five seconds. Carpets are recognized as an obstacle according to the setting specified in programming (carpet cleaning percentage).

I can’t find any release date info on the site.

I have to give major props to the folks at GoRobotics. They have two videos uploaded, which were filmed at the RoboNexus convention. A lot of good questions were asked and answered, so I suggest you take a look.

• video 1
• video 2

For those who aren’t on broadband, here are some quick notes taken from the videos:

• sounds a little loud..or maybe it’s the quality of the video?
• doesn’t completly dry the floors right now, will improve before it hits store shelves
• doesn’t have the technology to remember where it has already cleans. Uses a random cleaning method
• covers about 97% of the floor
• can make virtual walls using infrared beam, to contain the scooba in a particular area
• cleaning solution is not recycled, always using clean solution (unlike mopping)
• tanks hold a litre of water
• clean about 175 square feet per cleaning cycle
• cleaning head is dishwasher safe
• UI panel, will inform you about any problems with device, and cleaning status