Eddie Robot Platform, $1250
At this year’s Maker Faire Bay Area, the Microsoft Robotics group had Eddies out in force. This is a robot development platform for the serious developer. It’s a base and sensor array to which you add a laptop PC and a Kinect to create very powerful robot applications. It was made to be used with Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio. At the Faire, they had a little army of Eddies performing various tasks. My favorite was one that used facial recognition to latch onto and follow you around to take your picture — a paparazzibot! [Unfortunately, it looks like these are not currently in stock at Parallax. Don't know if they're coming back.]
I have the mint and love it. It is very quiet – barely noticeable unless it is right underfoot. It has two modes – sweeper and mop. You can use standard swiffer dust pads for the sweeper and swiffer makes a wet pad that works great for the mopping mode. Works great for our mostly wood or tile flooring. We run it regularly and you would be surprised at how much it picks up from “clean” floors. Not able to schedule like a roomba, but not really an issue, due to the fact that it is so quiet and can run relatively unnoticed with you in the room.
Thanks for that feedback, Jim. Does the NorthStar navigation work OK? I found it very problematic on the Rovio.
I have little reference for comparison. I will say that it is thorough and simple during sweep mode. It basically makes long runs back and forth in a very simple “mowing the lawn” pattern. In mop mode, it does a little 2 steps forward, 1 step back jig along a path that I would assume is to dislodge dirt. I always place the cube as instructed and it does show that it connects to the mint. It returns to its starting position and doesn’t seem to miss anything – although I have one very large room that it will only do half of and then I have to restart it on the other side – so it doesn’t wander too far from its cube. My only frame of reference is my friend’s roomba vacuum.
Put “Suicide Booth” on the Litter Bot and sales would go crazy.
We have the Neato vacuum bot and love it. Plus it’s like having a Super Nintendo running around your house.
The Gift of Bot