RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES 2002
ROOMBA
Words Craig Grannell
Ohyes, the Roomba – when robots finally did our bidding, just like sci-fi predicted!
Well, it wasn’t quite like in the films. The excellently named iRobot company did manage in a small way to “make it possible for housekeeping to be something you do by choice”. But its Roomba wasn’t a humanoid robot cleaner. It looked more like a squashed Dalek (unable to traverse stairs, or even a thick rug) crossed with a dying fly. Rather than mapping out a room, it spiralled out until it hit something, cleaned along the edges, and repeated that dance until the battery ran dry.