We’ve seen the videos, those tragic tales of robot vacuum cleaners leaving a trail of puppy poop behind. For all of their AI technology, they simply don’t recognize one fact. Some messes just won’t vacuum up neatly. Your robotic cleaning device ends up doing more harm than good. Roomba maker iRobot says they’ve nipped the problem in the bud. A writer at Daily Paws put this to the test. In her testing, the latest Roomba j7+ really does have the digital smarts to avoid pet messes.
I came home late from work one night to see that my elderly Chihuahua had missed the wee pad by a good bit and left her own dollop of poop on my kitchen floor. I had scheduled the Roomba for a run that was set to begin in a few minutes, so instead of cleaning up the accident myself, I decided to see what the j7+ would do.
It expertly avoided my pup’s poop. I was absolutely in awe. Once again, after the clean, the iRobot app asked me if this was a temporary obstacle, and I confirmed.
Check It Out: Roomba Delivers On Its Promise to End Pet Poo Disasters
I just preferred this. It’s 699 on Amazon, and these things rarely go on sale outside Black Friday times.
Also, there was a recent firmware update to the room a S9+ that provides a “careful driving” obstacle avoidance. This mode also can avoid things on the ground however th S9+ is an older model and it’s camera is on top of the robot whereas the J7+ is newer with a front facing camera. As such, iRobot provides a no poop guarantee with the J7 but not the s9, although the S9 does offer some smarts in this area.
So I’ve had many iterations of roomba and staring with the S9 and now the J7 they have actually gone from “idiots” to surprisingly smart. It takes several runs for the robots to learn your space, but if you’re a programmer it’s fascinating *to see how these robots “feel out” your space and learn it. It’s pretty sophisticated and once learned, these robots are super smart about traversal.
They are pricey, but these are the first units I’d consider to be smart.
We have an older, low end “dumb” Roomba named Rory. It gets the job done, but it does operate on a Brownian Motion principle. We can fence off areas, but only by putting wastebaskets in doorways and such. It’s crude but it does a surprisingly good job. We’ve been looking at updating Rory, (he’s been in continuous use five days a week for three or four years and is beginning to sound like his namesake.) The J7 is pricy, but the level of technology looks amazing. Being able to fence off certain areas electronically would be great. Heck, having him actually find its way back to the dock more than half the time would be a huge step up. Did I mention that this week Rory decided to switch from the programmed 7:00am run time to 3:30 in the afternoon for no discernible reason?
Rory was a good proof of concept, but it’s time for a step up and with two cats, having “mess avoidance” would be good.