Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#11

Post by mattmaroon » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:07 AM UTC

henning wrote: post #4

Because people would steal them the way they steal towels and other things in hotel rooms? It'd be a crackhead's paradise -- find the nearest hotel, break two room windows in, and score a cool $600 worth of electronics in a few minutes. Score!

Rather than breaking in, they'd just take the thing home after staying there, and then when they got billed, call the credit card company and say "I never saw any Roomba". Credit Card companies almost never deny a customer a charge back, and they certainly wouldn't over an item that actually could just run away on its own.

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#12

Post by mattmaroon » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:08 AM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #5

henning wrote: post #4

Because people would steal them the way they steal towels and other things in hotel rooms? It'd be a crackhead's paradise -- find the nearest hotel, break two room windows in, and score a cool $600 worth of electronics in a few minutes. Score!

Why don't they do that now for the TVs or the fine art?

Unlike the Roomba, a customer couldn't plausibly assert that a TV or a painting actually escaped from a room by itself.

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#13

Post by mattmaroon » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:09 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #2

Why Don't 99%+ of Americans use Roombas?

Because they are expensive and inefficient. They're largely novelty.

My primary reason is that they get stuck on cords easily, and I have too many of those to be worth the hassle of concealing.

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#14

Post by mattmaroon » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:11 AM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #3

Because vacuuming is <5% of what cleaning people do. You'd need an auto-emptying robot too, which is much harder to make. And you'd need to make it much more reliable - drastically increasing the life of the product. That's very hard.

Especially given that it needs to remain small in order to get under beds. You can't just slap a giant battery on it.

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#15

Post by timcederman » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:37 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #13

staunch wrote: post #2

Why Don't 99%+ of Americans use Roombas?

Because they are expensive and inefficient. They're largely novelty. My primary reason is that they get stuck on cords easily, and I have too many of those to be worth the hassle of concealing.

$99 is hardly expensive for a vacuum cleaner. Besides, that argument doesn't wash. You could say the same thing about dishwashers. Domestic robots are here to stay.

You're one geek with a lot of cords. Most people aren't like you...

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#16

Post by sown » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:48 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #9

sown wrote: post #7

Vacuuming a hotel is a fundamentally different engineering problem than vacuuming a house in a similar way that a dish washer for a restaurant is different than for a home. The washer from where I worked was a large industrial box that worked hard and fast. A home unit would have to conserve energy and water where as the industrial unit doesn't necessarily. Customers need clean dishes NOW more than the business needs…

It wouldn't have to be as fast as a human because it doesn't need to be watched and a maid could carry multiple of them. (In fact given their battery life, she'd have to.) She could clean room 1, release roomba 1 in it after she was done, move on to clean room 2 while roomba 1 worked, release roomba 2 after the end, etc. There might be a little lag at the end of the shift though, depending on the amount of time the R…

It'd be a substantial lag, I would guess.

The only way to find out is to actually run a simulation. I don't think a cleaner would have to carry multiple robots, just multiple batteries.

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#17

Post by sown » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:51 AM UTC

richcollins wrote: post #10

mattmaroon wrote: post #8

Wow, that is a stupid idea. http://mattmaroon.com/?p=416

Agreed. Most people use Roombas for entertainment purposes. It definitely takes more time to look after them than it would to do a better job with a vacuum. I bought one for my wife. I kind of think of it as a pet.

I dunno about the rest of you but mine actually works as advertised. I leave it on before I go to work and it cleans the whole (carpeted) house by the time I get home.

When you say look after them, what do you mean? I clean the brushes out about once a month and that takes a short while. The bin seems to need emptying about as often.

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#18

Post by sown » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 7:58 AM UTC

mattmaroon wrote: post #13

staunch wrote: post #2

Why Don't 99%+ of Americans use Roombas?

Because they are expensive and inefficient. They're largely novelty. My primary reason is that they get stuck on cords easily, and I have too many of those to be worth the hassle of concealing.

That's a lot of cords. :)

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#19

Post by henning » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 9:38 AM UTC

ivankirigin wrote: post #5

henning wrote: post #4

Because people would steal them the way they steal towels and other things in hotel rooms? It'd be a crackhead's paradise -- find the nearest hotel, break two room windows in, and score a cool $600 worth of electronics in a few minutes. Score!

Why don't they do that now for the TVs or the fine art?

A Roomba is much easier to pick up and stash.

Re: Why Don’t Hotels Use Roombas?

#20

Post by jrockway » Sat, Aug 02, 2008, 9:51 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #2

Why Don't 99%+ of Americans use Roombas?

Why don't 99%+ of developers use emacs or vi? Because they are too dumb to realize that their life can be improved. I assume a similar principle applies here.

mattmaroon (see blog post above) appears to be unable to follow the instructions included with the Roomba, so he doesn't like his. This is interesting because this is the same argument ("it's too hard") you hear about other cool things, like emacs, vi, CL, etc.

Anyway, I like mine. I start it when I shower and I emerge to have a clean apartment. I have a small apartment, though. Yes, it needs to be emptied every few days (and the cat hair removed from the brushes), but that takes all of 5 minutes -- much less time than vacuuming manually would have required. (The reality is that when I didn't have a Roomba, I just never vacuumed. Gross.)