There's more discussion about the 360 eye in this (15 hours older) thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8267622
[deleted]
Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
21–30 of 87 posts
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#22there's one thing I don't understand about this robot, as well as the roomba: how does it clean corners?
I don't know about the 360 eye, but the roomba has a little protruding spinner (http://bit.ly/1AdpUzs) that allows it to move things into the sweeping area. Works reasonably well on corners - it doesn't get dust right in the very tight part of the corner, but neither would a regular rolling vacuum cleaner.
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#23I find these round robots completely useless in Japan, because in most apartments, they are unable to move around because there's just too much stuff at ground level. There's a reason why normal vacuum cleaner ends are not shaped like landmine detectors, and unless you seriously address that point in your design, these robots will remain completely unadapted to most households.
This things are so popular right now in Japan. After going to the shops and seeing a demo of them, I'm also wondering how they work in a Japanese style apartment (most of which are tiny).
My friend got one (forgot the brand) because she didn't have time to clean.
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#24I find these round robots completely useless in Japan, because in most apartments, they are unable to move around because there's just too much stuff at ground level. There's a reason why normal vacuum cleaner ends are not shaped like landmine detectors, and unless you seriously address that point in your design, these robots will remain completely unadapted to most households.
This things are so popular right now in Japan. After going to the shops and seeing a demo of them, I'm also wondering how they work in a Japanese style apartment (most of which are tiny). My friend got one (forgot the brand) because she didn't have time to clean.
I've seen them at work in Japan and they are far from being efficient because of the space constraints, and because there are usually carpets everywhere in Japan too so it makes the surface uneven. They are way too expensive too, yet they seem to sell pretty well. Sharp even has a funny model that say "Ouch!" ("Itai" in Japanese) every time it hits something. That's cute, but that shows how stupid these robots are.
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#25I'm still impressed by the fact that Dyson made a fan with no...fans.
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#26if you're interested in the product you'll get about 1000 times more information via their website than this article https://www.dyson360eye.com/
Yikes, what did they do to the page's "scroll" function? Do people actually find that usable? It definitely made me think the page was broken at first... The slideshow seems like a 'play' (right-arrow) much more than a 'scroll' (down-arrow). Is this a metaphor for Dyson vacuums in general? (Technically-clever, shiny, but not necessarily the most effective)
Not only the scroll wheel, but clicking on the links at the top open up a different browser tab. Why do people like playing with standard browser behaviour like that?
And best of all, the "shop" link takes you to a shop where you can't buy it...
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#27I'm still impressed by the fact that Dyson made a fan with no...fans.
They didn't. The fan is integrated in the base. Actually the fan example is exactly what makes me look at any Dyson announcements with a lot of skepticism.
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly enough, for robotic vacuums _low_ weight is also a problem: the better your suction, the worse your ability to drive! The tank-tread wheels on Dyson's model are meant to help mitigate against this, but I gather from (now ex-) insiders that this is still a buggy sticking point (ha!) that needs to be solved before release.
Wouldn't high suction give you better traction (ie. by adding an additional downward force to the force of gravity) and hence mitigate any disadvantage of low weight ? Also with sufficiently well-controlled motors you should be able to optimize suction and drive, say to minimize power consumption or maximize speed/vacuum power.
It'd give somewhat better traction but at the same time you increase the likelihood of stalling your motors. How does the machine know if the motors are stalling because there's something jammed in the wheels or because the vacuum is sucking stuck to the floor? You can design algorithms or sensor mechanisms to try and determine this and also tune the motors but now you have even more problems!
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#29I appreciate the extra detail here. Having built small robotics platforms for more than a couple of decades I completely agree with much of what Dyson is saying, things really have changed tremendously in the last 5 years. Between $0.75 32 bit MCUs with 64K of flash and 8K of ram, to $3.00 6DOF IMU chips, to $5 HD video cameras, the ability to put high resolution sensors, better compute, and getting more watts per gr…
Interestingly enough, for robotic vacuums _low_ weight is also a problem: the better your suction, the worse your ability to drive! The tank-tread wheels on Dyson's model are meant to help mitigate against this, but I gather from (now ex-) insiders that this is still a buggy sticking point (ha!) that needs to be solved before release.
ex-dyson robotic engineer here.
Correct - low weight means you have less force to apply to the wheels and hence achieve grip. The design of the aperture where the air goes into the vaccum (the soleplate) has to be optimised between flicking the carpet fibres in the right fashion to achieve good dirt pickup and not impeding sliding across the carpet too much.
The design of the tyres is critical. If there is any slip in the tyres you have a problem. Even though the attitude and trajectory of the robot is governed by the information coming from the camera it does also rely on feedback from the wheel speed sensors. If you have slip on one side and not the other then you will tend to spin around and not drive in a straight line. Adding more power to the slipping wheel merely exacerbates the problem.
You'll notice the treads on the tank tracks are chunky. This is to give maximum grip on thicker pile carpets, however this kind of carpet tend to be "squishy" and allow the wheels to float somewhat on the carpet surface no matter what design of tyre. So this is probably where they are having problems. Also you'll notice the wheels are not rigidly mounted to the robot chassis, they have suspension. But unlike car suspension the bottom of the robot does take some of the weight and it touches the floor. If you have more mass in the robot it gives you more latitude to distribute it between the wheels and the soleplate.
Its a careful balancing act and all of these variables have to be tuned based on the amount of suction your vacuum motor is providing.
Re: Why Dyson's robot vacuum took 16 years, and why it's headed to Japan first
#30I find these round robots completely useless in Japan, because in most apartments, they are unable to move around because there's just too much stuff at ground level. There's a reason why normal vacuum cleaner ends are not shaped like landmine detectors, and unless you seriously address that point in your design, these robots will remain completely unadapted to most households.
Did you look at the Neato ones. Their new botvac can vacuum very close to a corner since the brush and vacuum head is placed towards the front and left.
http://img1.lesnumeriques.com/produits/601/20289/Neato_Botva...
