IRobot Roomba 980 Robot Vacuum Cleaner
We continue testing robot vacuum cleaners - this time we’ll talk about the new iRobot Roomba 980 flagship. According to numerous reviews, this robot provides a little better quality cleaning than Roomba 880, and at the same time supports a number of intelligent functions, WiFi and the possibility of a simple upgrade software. The difference in price between 880 and 980 in our area is about 35%! The key question is, is it worth it? Let's try to figure it out.
In the beginning, a few words about iRobot. The company is American, it has existed since the 90th year and specializes in creating various robots, however, this year, the iRobot management officially announced full withdrawal from the military business. The division responsible for the development of tactical robots, robots, engineers, robots to work with hazardous substances and all sorts of secret things left Arlington Capital Partners for $ 46 million dollars. And now iRobot will be able to fully concentrate on creating robots for home and office and not be afraid of associations with some sinister skynet, while maintaining a significant advantage over other manufacturers of vacuum cleaning robots in the form of experience on behavior algorithms for all the above machines, plus experience on robots for cleaning pools and even imitating personal presence - Ava.
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All stages of the test, as always, are fixed in the video version
Another important news for iRobot is the recent release of the Roomba 980, a new senior model in the iRobot line. Roomba 980 is fully equipped. All the necessary sensors and sensors, so as not to crash into the wall from acceleration or suddenly not fall off the ladder, are present. The camera's eye does not look straight up, but up and forward, so the robot can receive additional visual reference points for better navigation. The technology is called iAdapt 2.0. A house map is built from scratch each time - after a reboot, the robot will forget everything. Also note that if your pets have favorite places, you must protect them and food bowls with the help of the navigation beacons that come with them. Otherwise, the robot can smudge and spill everything.
The robot can clean up the whole house, not only in a single room, but high powders and a carpet with too dense pile can become an insurmountable obstacle for it. Driving onto a regular carpet, the robot detects a change of cover and automatically increases its own power. The side brush is the only one and it is located on the right. This is due to the fact that during the movement along the walls and pieces of furniture the robot is programmed to unfold towards them with the right side, and to bypass the legs of the tables around the perimeter. This side brush mercilessly winds hair, wires and curtains. If the robot understands that he cannot go on, he begins to explain with a pleasant female voice in Russian what exactly is wrong and what needs to be done. However, the side brush can be removed. There is no UV lamp on the bottom of the machine body. As iRobot engineers explained to us, from their point of view, this is a rather useless device, battery power is already limited, and the UV device would be more of an advertising move, since the duration of UV radiation would not be sufficient for high-quality disinfection, given the speed of movement of the robot.
Not all are well cleaned under the sofas and beds, but children and pets perfectly go there and are covered with scraps of age-old dust. If the height of the legs is a little more than ten centimeters - the robot will quietly climb under them and clean up. You will not find brushes on the bottom of the robot, but there are two rubber rollers here. Here they are almost no hair wound and immediately sent to the trash. There is one more plus in this implementation - there is no brush - there is nothing to get stuck in the door mats. One of the robots tested by us so zealously tried to pry his brush out of the coconut pile, that he had lost not only the brush, but also some spare part, and now he is rattling madly. And at least henna.
The principle of cleaning iRobot Roomba 980 - the air flow hits the contaminating material, after which it is picked up rollers and lifted into the interior of the vacuum cleaner. Next, the pollutant is sucked into the container. The container is convenient - you can pull it out without removing the robot from charging. Cleared elementary. The dust collector is equipped with a cyclone filter and a fine filter. The robot is positioned as hypoallergenic. Despite its relatively high power, iRobot Roomba 980's noise level is not as high as we expected - 63 dB at 2 meters from the robot. In eco IVF mode it is lower. And iRobot has finally switched from nickel-metal hydride batteries to lithium-ion batteries, this has increased the charging speed and reduced the weight of the device. On one charge, the robot is able to run up to two hours. Charges about 90 minutes, after which it can continue cleaning if it did not manage to do everything.
We did not find the remote control unit with the device. Instead, it is proposed to use a special iRobot application for mobile devices running iOS and Android. With this application you can manage the schedule and start cleaning. And also to customize the mode of operation. Plus, it is possible to access a number of indicators - is the trash bin full? Where is the robot now - on charging or on cleaning? Personally, we in the application do not have enough charge level indicator. I want to believe that in future versions they will add the ability to control the machine from the first person, or at least just manage it - it will be possible to arrange races. Joking, of course. For gonochek expensive turns out - 900 USD for one car. But, as an additional means of monitoring security and order in the house - it would be great. By the way, the robot supports the ability to update software through the same application, hence our hopes.
We prepared the room, as we did in our past test of robotic vacuum cleaners and placed obstacles in the form of a chair and a regular vacuum cleaner. Now spill the contaminating material. And we estimate the quality of the route, the quality of cleaning and the overall speed of the task. Complete with a vacuum cleaner was a pair of lighthouses for the deployment of virtual walls. We also used them. Where the robot passes, it becomes noticeably cleaner. The result is still not at the level of classic vacuum cleaners, but for a robot vacuum cleaner it is close to the reference one. The robot cleans up quickly - a little less than ten minutes, but stubbornly ignores the strip of blind zones next to the chair - about half of the pollutant has been removed. 2-3rd passes in the same way, the result is worse than that of outsiders of the previous test. At first they assumed that the matter was in the virtual walls, but their disconnection did not have the result. But, as soon as we turned off the two brand-new lighting fixtures of 7200 lumens each - in the past test they were not - and the vacuum cleaner immediately saw the light. Powerful studio lighting, it seems, just blinded him. And now you know how to deal with automatic airbot production turrets (this is a joke). So, we repeat the test from scratch with the usual room light and now in 16 minutes the robot removes about 95% of the pollutant. Separately, we note that, in contrast to a number of robots from the past test, the rumba 980 treated the furniture with care and did not lift the chair across the room.
We state that the cleaning quality of iRobot Roomba 980 showed an excellent result with the prospect of further improving the speed of cleaning, because who knows what they will add with future firmware updates. In fact, this is where we see the answer to the question of whether to overpay for Roomba 980 or still take its twin brother without WiFi (as you guessed, this is about the 880th model). If the application adds the ability to look at the world "through the eyes of a robot" and remotely control them, and also gradually improve the cleaning algorithms with soft updates, then this will be really great. However, here and now, the presence of WiFi in the robot does not provide significant practical advantages over the traditional remote control - yes, you can start it from work and check whether it is cleaning or charging. Well, as if all. And, if we were told that there would be no such updates, then personally for ourselves we would still take the more accessible 880th model. Well, iRobot, the word is yours.
PS Less than half an hour after the publication of the material, iRobot representatives contacted us and reported that an update with a remote view from the camera with a first-person view will still be - as long as the opportunity is “raw” and is in the testing stage, its use will be required registration on the iRobot website
PPS also told us that Roomba 880 and 980 have different motherboards - this is a key technical difference, but for owners of the 880th Roomba there will also be an opportunity to update the software (it is assumed that you do this in the service center)
In the beginning, a few words about iRobot. The company is American, it has existed since the 90th year and specializes in creating various robots, however, this year, the iRobot management officially announced full withdrawal from the military business. The division responsible for the development of tactical robots, robots, engineers, robots to work with hazardous substances and all sorts of secret things left Arlington Capital Partners for $ 46 million dollars. And now iRobot will be able to fully concentrate on creating robots for home and office and not be afraid of associations with some sinister skynet, while maintaining a significant advantage over other manufacturers of vacuum cleaning robots in the form of experience on behavior algorithms for all the above machines, plus experience on robots for cleaning pools and even imitating personal presence - Ava.
')
All stages of the test, as always, are fixed in the video version
Another important news for iRobot is the recent release of the Roomba 980, a new senior model in the iRobot line. Roomba 980 is fully equipped. All the necessary sensors and sensors, so as not to crash into the wall from acceleration or suddenly not fall off the ladder, are present. The camera's eye does not look straight up, but up and forward, so the robot can receive additional visual reference points for better navigation. The technology is called iAdapt 2.0. A house map is built from scratch each time - after a reboot, the robot will forget everything. Also note that if your pets have favorite places, you must protect them and food bowls with the help of the navigation beacons that come with them. Otherwise, the robot can smudge and spill everything.
The robot can clean up the whole house, not only in a single room, but high powders and a carpet with too dense pile can become an insurmountable obstacle for it. Driving onto a regular carpet, the robot detects a change of cover and automatically increases its own power. The side brush is the only one and it is located on the right. This is due to the fact that during the movement along the walls and pieces of furniture the robot is programmed to unfold towards them with the right side, and to bypass the legs of the tables around the perimeter. This side brush mercilessly winds hair, wires and curtains. If the robot understands that he cannot go on, he begins to explain with a pleasant female voice in Russian what exactly is wrong and what needs to be done. However, the side brush can be removed. There is no UV lamp on the bottom of the machine body. As iRobot engineers explained to us, from their point of view, this is a rather useless device, battery power is already limited, and the UV device would be more of an advertising move, since the duration of UV radiation would not be sufficient for high-quality disinfection, given the speed of movement of the robot.
Not all are well cleaned under the sofas and beds, but children and pets perfectly go there and are covered with scraps of age-old dust. If the height of the legs is a little more than ten centimeters - the robot will quietly climb under them and clean up. You will not find brushes on the bottom of the robot, but there are two rubber rollers here. Here they are almost no hair wound and immediately sent to the trash. There is one more plus in this implementation - there is no brush - there is nothing to get stuck in the door mats. One of the robots tested by us so zealously tried to pry his brush out of the coconut pile, that he had lost not only the brush, but also some spare part, and now he is rattling madly. And at least henna.
The principle of cleaning iRobot Roomba 980 - the air flow hits the contaminating material, after which it is picked up rollers and lifted into the interior of the vacuum cleaner. Next, the pollutant is sucked into the container. The container is convenient - you can pull it out without removing the robot from charging. Cleared elementary. The dust collector is equipped with a cyclone filter and a fine filter. The robot is positioned as hypoallergenic. Despite its relatively high power, iRobot Roomba 980's noise level is not as high as we expected - 63 dB at 2 meters from the robot. In eco IVF mode it is lower. And iRobot has finally switched from nickel-metal hydride batteries to lithium-ion batteries, this has increased the charging speed and reduced the weight of the device. On one charge, the robot is able to run up to two hours. Charges about 90 minutes, after which it can continue cleaning if it did not manage to do everything.
We did not find the remote control unit with the device. Instead, it is proposed to use a special iRobot application for mobile devices running iOS and Android. With this application you can manage the schedule and start cleaning. And also to customize the mode of operation. Plus, it is possible to access a number of indicators - is the trash bin full? Where is the robot now - on charging or on cleaning? Personally, we in the application do not have enough charge level indicator. I want to believe that in future versions they will add the ability to control the machine from the first person, or at least just manage it - it will be possible to arrange races. Joking, of course. For gonochek expensive turns out - 900 USD for one car. But, as an additional means of monitoring security and order in the house - it would be great. By the way, the robot supports the ability to update software through the same application, hence our hopes.
We prepared the room, as we did in our past test of robotic vacuum cleaners and placed obstacles in the form of a chair and a regular vacuum cleaner. Now spill the contaminating material. And we estimate the quality of the route, the quality of cleaning and the overall speed of the task. Complete with a vacuum cleaner was a pair of lighthouses for the deployment of virtual walls. We also used them. Where the robot passes, it becomes noticeably cleaner. The result is still not at the level of classic vacuum cleaners, but for a robot vacuum cleaner it is close to the reference one. The robot cleans up quickly - a little less than ten minutes, but stubbornly ignores the strip of blind zones next to the chair - about half of the pollutant has been removed. 2-3rd passes in the same way, the result is worse than that of outsiders of the previous test. At first they assumed that the matter was in the virtual walls, but their disconnection did not have the result. But, as soon as we turned off the two brand-new lighting fixtures of 7200 lumens each - in the past test they were not - and the vacuum cleaner immediately saw the light. Powerful studio lighting, it seems, just blinded him. And now you know how to deal with automatic airbot production turrets (this is a joke). So, we repeat the test from scratch with the usual room light and now in 16 minutes the robot removes about 95% of the pollutant. Separately, we note that, in contrast to a number of robots from the past test, the rumba 980 treated the furniture with care and did not lift the chair across the room.
We state that the cleaning quality of iRobot Roomba 980 showed an excellent result with the prospect of further improving the speed of cleaning, because who knows what they will add with future firmware updates. In fact, this is where we see the answer to the question of whether to overpay for Roomba 980 or still take its twin brother without WiFi (as you guessed, this is about the 880th model). If the application adds the ability to look at the world "through the eyes of a robot" and remotely control them, and also gradually improve the cleaning algorithms with soft updates, then this will be really great. However, here and now, the presence of WiFi in the robot does not provide significant practical advantages over the traditional remote control - yes, you can start it from work and check whether it is cleaning or charging. Well, as if all. And, if we were told that there would be no such updates, then personally for ourselves we would still take the more accessible 880th model. Well, iRobot, the word is yours.
PS Less than half an hour after the publication of the material, iRobot representatives contacted us and reported that an update with a remote view from the camera with a first-person view will still be - as long as the opportunity is “raw” and is in the testing stage, its use will be required registration on the iRobot website
PPS also told us that Roomba 880 and 980 have different motherboards - this is a key technical difference, but for owners of the 880th Roomba there will also be an opportunity to update the software (it is assumed that you do this in the service center)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/371933/
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