Traditional dirt sensor vacuums resist the robotic onslaught

Rise of the machine … dirt sensor vacuums

In an earlier post on the latest CES-announced robotic vacuums with airborne dust sensors and for people with allergies, we promised to do a post on traditional (manual) vacuums that incorporated dust sensors just like their robotic dirt sensor vacuum peers.

We explained why this was necessary. If your carpet is relatively clean and is just getting a weekly maintenance vacuum, most people (and most cleaning services) will just do a single pass. As the robotic vacuums clearly show, that’s not enough. You still want to do multiple passes, and extra passes where there is extra dirt. Robotic dirt sensor vacuums can detect this extra dirt from footfalls and places near windows and doors where air currents deposit airborne pollution. Humans can’t see this (although they’ll notice the robotic vacuum has managed to get the carpet just a tiny shade lighter even if it’s vacuumed every week).

Robotic vacuums, beginning with the iRobot Roomba nearly a decade ago, pioneered dirt sensors. Originally these dirt sensor vacuums used ultrasonic (acoustic) sensors.

Around the same time, in the traditional vacuum world, Dyson (and others) came along with their bag less vacuums that offered a transparent window on the dirt being suction. That was the human version of the dust sensor — now you could finally see the dirt being pulled in.

Robotic vacuums have come full circle. The Roomba 770 and similar models feature a see-through dust bin, and a second dirt sensor that uses optics, likely inspired by the way humans can optically ‘see’ dirt moving into the Dyson and similar vacuums.

Too soon for robotic dirt sensor vacuums to say “hasta la vista” to traditional  vacs?

But now at least a small number of high-end traditional vacuum models have gone one-up on the Roomba: adding electronic dirt sensors that score the dust on a display for the human operator.

We’ve heard rumors about these traditional vacuums with dirt sensors from some well-heeled gadget connoisseur friend. Indeed, they are rare in the United States, but Amazon will ship you the latest Electrolux vacuum with electronic dirt indicator from Japan. And in addition to our affluent gadget freak friend. (who of course had to have the very latest manual vacuum), we heard other people brag that they had this amazing Electrolux-with-dirt-sensor, so apparently Americans buy these through Amazon and other outlets even if they don’t seem readily available in physical stores here yet.

Vacuum Judgement Day … there’s an iPhone app for that.

Unlike the Moneual robotic vac, it doesn’t seem like any of these traditional vacuums are Internet-connected or have iPhone apps to monitor them. It obviously makes less sense for a traditional vacuum to have a remote app, since you have to physical lug them around anyway. (Indeed, when we describe the ability of some of these robotic vacs to schedule themselves or turn themselves on in response to dust conditions or from a mobile app, not everyone realizes we are talking about robots. “Oh, the vacuum turns itself on, but it’s in the closet. What good does that do?”)

But as connecting to the Internet of things becomes increasing less expensive, even traditional vacs will report information back to it. Likely they’ll follow the lead set by their robotic peers, and start by reporting how much dirt and dust they collected during their last use.

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