The Internet of Things comes to vacuum cleaners at CES
The Internet of Things was big at CES this year so we went looking for appliance manufacturers that had incorporated a dust sensor (and Internet connection!) into their appliances.
We’re apparently a little ahead bit of the pack on this, as most exhibitors in this space weren’t quite thinking along these lines yet. (There were “smart vent hoods” that might, or might not, incorporate a dust sensor. These allow restaurants to save energy, and we might do a future post on them [updated: link].)
One company that was thinking along these lines was Moneual, that makes a robotic vacuum competitor to the iRobot Roomba that we review below.
The exhibit heavily touted that the Moneual was “a hybrid” dry and mop robotic vacuum. This is a brilliant marketing move, and it makes sense that the same robot vacuum should be able to also mop. (If you wanted both functionalities from iRobot you’d have to buy two separate robots.) That being said, it looks like the mop is just an attachment that was added, perhaps almost as an afterthought.
Where Moneual has innovated is in the addition of an iPhone app that will report how much dirt the Moneual has picked up on each cleaning. This will let you optimize your cleaning schedule. No doubt iRobot will be adding a feature like this (and an Internet connection) to their robots in the future. (It looks like this is a new feature that Moneual announced at CES; the iPhone app does not appear available for the Moneual model available off Amazon.)
New vacuums with Airborne Dust Sensors demonstrated at CES
What got our attention is the airborne dust sensor (shown in the photo; also not yet available in the model on Amazon). This ranks airborne dust on a proprietary scale from 1-99, and, according to the Moneual rep we spoke with at CES, will turn on the vacuum if the air becomes to dusty.
Given our own work in this area, we were very skeptical this would work correctly, and told the Moneual representative that. If you just open the window in urban California (or in urban Europe, where Moneual is from) you will get a huge day-to-day fluctuation in dust (both PM2.5 and PM10.). You can’t use a sensor to turn on your robotic vacuum, or it will trigger falsely as a result of opening the door or window! (Even funnier, as described, a forest fire, like the Colby Fire outside of Los Angeles, could trigger the vacuum!)
(It’s a different story if the sensor keeps tract of cumulative dust in the air, since that could indicate the amount of dust that has built up on the carpet. But the Moneual rep denied that the sensor was recording cumulative dust, only current dust levels. We wanted to know if it was monitoring PM2.5 or PM10 dust levels, so asked the rep about the size of dust particles that were detected. He didn’t know, but did offer to demonstrate with some grains of sugar. We have not seen grains of sugar floating in the air much where we live, so we do not think this a good demonstration! But, obviously, it is intented to be sensitive to at least the larger (but reportedly less dangerous) dust particles. This may work in places with very clean air, so that any dust is indicative of a need to run the vacuum. However, with weekly vacuuming, most of the dust in the air in the more typical urban environment is the result of incoming pollution, not dust coming off the carpet, so we do not think this will work, at least as the rep explained it to us.
If Moneual wants to get in touch and tell us more about the sensor, and how to convert those numbers to PM2.5 or PM10 readings (assuming that’s what it reads), we’d be happy to support their sensor in our app.
Moneual versus iRobot Roomba
If you look at reviews on Amazon, it seems consumers still prefer the iRobot Roomba robot vacuums over the Moneual MR6550 Rydis Hyrbrid. We’ve used robotic vacuums for what seems like a decade now, and have experience both with the nearly decade-old Roomba Discovery SE and the more recent Roomba 770 robotic vacuum.
The Roomba 770 is a polished product, as would be expected for a robotic vacuum that is now several generation models old. For those familiar with older Roombas, the major improvement (other than much better battery life) is the addition of a second dirt detector The older Roombas have an ultrasonic (acoustic) dirt detector for years; the 770 adds an optical dirt sensor as well. Other very noticeable changes are optical sensors (the Roomba can now ‘see’ walls and other obstructions, unless they are black in color) that allows the Roomba to slow down and do a soft touch with walls compared against the older Roomba models. Asside from adding a HEPA filter that is better for people “with pets and allergies”, another major change is that the Roomba will now do a more human-like back-and-forth pattern when it detects carpet dirt (the older Roombas would go into a circular spot cleaning mode when they detected dirt). The 770 also has virtual wall units that now turn themselves on automatically (older units only turned themselves off automatically).
Why dust/dirt sensors are very important for robotic vacuums
The dirt sensor is very important. On a clean, frequently vacuumed carpet, a human basically can’t detect that some regions (where there are heavy footballs, or near windows and doors where air currents deposit pollution dirt). The Roomba, however, can detect this additional dirt, and focuses its time on those areas in need of the greatest vacuuming. It gets the carpets cleaner than most humans will. (Every cleaning service we’ve every tried does a single pass and then says “we’re done.” But even on a clean carpet, a single pass is not enough. The Roomba does multiple passes, and extra passes on top of that where it detects extra dirt.) Typically the Roomba will get the carpet a (barely perceptible but very real) shade lighter, even on a heavily (weekly) vacuumed carpet, which is amazing as we typically don’t see this with manual single-pass cleaning!
Vacuums as both a potential cause of and solution to airborne pollution and allergies
(Incidentally, the EPA recommends a carpet cleaning schedule to minimize dust being given up carpets. Since this schedule is on the order of weeks or months, we’ll assume most readers are vacuuming much more frequently than this, and we’ll hold this topic off for a future post.)
Ironically, the 770, when it is running, will send PM2.5 and PM10 dust particle counts spiking in the air. (We say this is ironic, because the 770 adds a HEPA dust filter and is marketed for “pets and allergies.) The increase is modest compared with running a dishwasher, gas range, or shower, but it’s still there. (It took our room from “excellent” to merely “good” on the unofficial, stricter indoor air quality standard reported by our app that some people use. Both counts were still in the EPA “good” range, but some people can notice the difference.) The irony, of course, is that if the room is not vacuumed, footfalls will eventually stir up more dirt, so of course this robotic vacuum is an invaluable tool in improving air quality. Yes if you have allergies or asthma you’ll probably want to vacuum frequently, maybe with this HEPA filter robot vacuum when you’re not around to breathe in the dust it stirs up!
iRobot Roomba 770 versus Roomba 780
Our 770 also includes a dust bin sensor that reports when the dust bin is full. iRobot kept the Roomba’s navigation system simple. It uses several simple patterns to insure multiple passes over a room. One downside of this robust simplicity, however, is that larger rooms will take longer for the Roomba to vacuum and ensure every area has been vacuumed several times. The more expensive 780 model solves this problem by adding ‘virtual lighthouses.’ These are similar to virtual wall units, except that divide the area into several virtual rooms. This allows Roomba to more efficiently navigate each virtual room (since it similar than the complete area to be cleaned) and throughly clean it before moving on to the next virtual room. If you have a large area to vacuum, the 780 might make sense because of its room lighthouse feature. Then again, a small amount of preparation is typically required for each room (e.g., moving loose cords out of the way), so if you’re around while the Roomba is vacuuming you could simply use a virtual wall unit to cordon off a small area, and manually move the Roomba to the next ‘room’ when it is done with the first one.
iRobot Roomba versus iRobot Scooba; Scooba for countertops?!?
While we’re on the topic of robotic vacuums, we’ve also tested a iRobot Scooba 230, which we’ve found saves us time in washing floors and countertops. (Washing countertops is a bit of an off-label use for the Scooba, but it works.)
For those that aren’t familiar with the Scooba, it is the wet floor washing version of the Roomba. It holds two water tanks (or really one water tank separated by a flexible divider that separates the clean water from the dirty water). It washes and scrubs hard surfaces in a way similar to how the Roomba does dry vacuuming. (The Scooba cannot wet vacuum carpets, as its sensors and wheels are designed for traction on a wet, hard surface and cannot properly navigate over a carpeted area. There is one robotic vacuum that can handle carnets, the Bissell Spotbot, although its navigational ability seems limited to a circular area. Someday, robotic wet vacuums will be able to handle both hard floors and carpets, no doubt.)
The Scooba is not as intelligent as the Roomba, apparently because navigation and dirt sensing in a wet environment are hard problems. Regardless of how dirty a floor or countertop area is, our Scooba runs for a set time, 20 or 40 minutes depending on setting, which is related to the limit of its battery and water tank. This is in contrast to the Roomba, which can figure out when it is done cleaning.
Nevertheless, we find our Scooba a tremendous time-saver. We have it repeatedly scrub an area while we do something else.
We mentioned that we’ve gotten it to wash our countertops as an ‘off-label use.’ We find that iRobot’s natural enzyme cleaner has, as its name implies, a very safe chemistry for things like granite countertops, since it is simply a biologically-derived protein cleaner (which is what “natural enzyme” means) plus some surfactant against which stone will be inert. (iRobot also sells a lysol beach version for its 390 Scooba bot, although this is not supported for our Scooba model. Bleach is obviously a much harsher chemical than an enzymatic cleaner, and wouldn’t be sure about bleach on granite; we would avoid using it on expensive surfaces without testing. The 390 adds a better pre-vacuum over the 230. This is great for floors but probably makes it too large for countertops, or at least less practical.) iRobot describes this as a “hard floor cleaner” so using it on countertops is a bit of an off-label usage, but the Scooba will reportedly loose traction if used an unsupported formula. Probably to avoid damage to the internal plastic tank “bladder” from the bleach, the Scooba 230 only officially supports the “natural enzyme hard floor cleaner” or “plain water” as the two cleaning formulas, so our choices are limited if we wanted to use our Scooba on countertops.
The Scooba will occasionally lose traction, so, unlike the Roomba, can’t be left completely unattended on countertops (although we did feel comfortable walking out of the room for 15 minutes or so while it washed the floor). In particular, use on countertops requires some clever use of virtual wall units or other boundaries. However, you can do other things while your Scooba scrubs & washes your floor or countertop.
Much needed technology: finally getting vacuum cleaners to surf the Internet
Unlike that Moneual model announced at CES, neither the Roomba nor the Scooba are yet connected to the Internet, so don’t report how much dirt they’ve cleaned to an iPhone app. We’re certain this will get added in the near future. (Perhaps someday the Roomba will also incorporate an airborne dust sensor, or be able to direct air through its carpet dirt sensor to detect airborne dust. While this might not be that useful for detecting a need to clean a carpet, it would be great for monitoring airborne pollution levels! We’d love to support Roomba or Moneaul in our dust-monitoring app!)
Traditional vacuums with dust sensors
There are also a small number of traditional (i.e., non-robotic) high-end vacuum cleaner models that have sensors that report back to user how dirty a particular area is. Humans generally can’t detect this (especially on carpets that are already very clean), and no doubt these capabilities have been inspired by the dust sensors on their robotic cousins. We’ll do a future blog post on some of these.