Word: roombas
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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...face it, vacuuming sucks. That's why a group of M.I.T. brainiacs created Roomba, a robot that vacuums your house for you. Running on rechargeable batteries, Roomba roams your house entirely on its own, swooping up dust bunnies and stray Cheerios and zipping under beds and couches where mere humans can't reach. Its sensors keep it from bumping into walls and furniture or falling off staircases. When it finishes a room, Roomba beeps proudly and turns itself off. INVENTOR iRobot AVAILABILITY Now, $199 TO LEARN MORE www.roombavac.com...
...Roomba had three parents: Rodney Brooks, director of M.I.T.'s AI Lab, and two of his former graduate students, Colin Angle and Helen Greiner. Brooks, who was featured in the 1997 documentary Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, is arguably the world's greatest living roboticist. A voluble Australian, he's famous for finding radical, counterintuitive approaches to intractable problems; the NASA rover that went to Mars aboard Pathfinder was designed using techniques he pioneered...
...subject that most scientists never really study: cleaning floors. They got down on their knees and worked out the physics of how dust collects and circulates. Vacuum cleaners consume large amounts of electricity, so they had to invent a new kind of low-power vacuum that would allow Roomba to run on rechargeable batteries. They ran their baby bot over "torture tracks" to test its mobility. They spent a night in a Target store to watch industrial cleaners at work...
...READY TO ROOMBA...
With an innovative array of sensors that let this robo-vac navigate obstacles on your living-room floor, Roomba offers a glimpse into the future of housecleaning. Read the review on page 59, then head to TIME.com to see an animated graphic detailing the soul of this new machine and watch video of the cleaner in action. All at time.com/roomba...