will be replaced by humanoid robots soon
You gotta love the idea of a humanoid robot, shuffling around and bumping into everything to navigate while wiping up a bit.
Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
101–110 of 839 posts
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#102They outsourced production to China thinking that they can just do the marketing in US. Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.
How many general public appliance makers out there have a competitive production line outside of China ? As I understand the only countries where one could barely pull that off would be Korea or Japan, and the local makers are mostly giving up as they lose too much on cost.
The German luxury brands have made the "made in Germany" shtick a core part of their marketing. So Miele, Gaggenau, Vorwerk, ect.
Bosch/Siemens are far larger than those, but they outsourced a lot. But even here, significant parts of the higher-end stuff is still made outside China.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vorwerk group. No idea, but it’s pointless imho. Roborock and Eufy (and other competitors) clearly either stole or reverse-engineered the tech. If the IP had enough value then I’m sure Vorwerk would’ve pursued it in court. But here we are.
Vorwerk makes really good hardware and home appliances. Its only negative part is the almost pyramidal sales style. It's not really pyramidal as in the scam, because you actually buy something and you don't need to become a seller, but it uses "regular housewives" [1] as sellers. [1] at least 30 years ago, now many of them do also another paid work (not Vorwerk-related) on top of unpaid house chores.
[deleted]
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
> non-mop vacuum Such a good point. Vacuum wars website has no way to filter out vacuums without mop (my house is mostly carpet, I do want a good product but they are all with mops nowadays). It's such a common issue with sites like this. It's either all products or products WITH this feature. No way to find products WITHOUT this feature. Anyway quite happy with my Mova which is a rebranded Dreame.
my house is actually mostly tiles/hardwood (at least areas that are accessible for roomba). but i want it just to be vacuumed. polished tiles will always have some water marks after washing and require pass with floor buffer to buff it out. i also don't want to deal with with clean/dirty water (yeah, i know that are now few models that you can hookup to drain/water supply. but it's not exactly trivial to arrange in c…
You can avoid water marks by using distilled water.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#105I wonder what happens to the app and cloud functionality. > Under the restructuring, vacuum cleaner maker Shenzhen PICEA will receive the entire equity stake in the reorganized company. The company’s common stock will be wiped out under the proposed Chapter 11 plan. Hopefully they keep the lights on.
Remember that with the dorita980[1] project and similar you can liberate roombas from their cloud. I run mine with a ready made docker container.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#106I bought a roomba because I associated it with quality. It's crap! I bought a nice mopping model. The cheap one I had before was even better with a simple only-turn-left algorithm. I'm not surprised by this.
Reading the comments, I'm glad the industry is way ahead, and I was just confused. I think I'm gonna sell and get a better one.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#107This is the cost of complacency. They were ahead for so long then the likes of Roborock just left them in the dirt. I remember the first time I tried one of the Roborock devices, and until then I have been a long time Roomba user (like, 20 years). I just couldn’t believe how much better it was. And iRobot just stubbornly refused to iterate on their fundamental products.
That seems to be a problem with many companies. Chinese companies are innovating aggressively while others don’t. You see that with 3d printers where Bambu is kicking ass. I remember when GoPro did a drone and it simply wasn’t good. Or American carmakers are trying to turn back the clock on electric instead of embracing it.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#108If you've used any non-iRobot vacuum alternatives in the last 5 years and ever owned a Roomba in the past there should be nothing surprising about this headline. It's shocking to me how good Roborock mop-vacuums are for example, Eufy vacuums are nice as well. They still run into unavoidable issues, but they're: much quieter even at their highest setting; show you how they map out the space; allow you to easily custom…
Currently looking to make my living space robot friendly, I wonder: can they clean hard to reach spots behind doors or under the ledge of a sofa (I can't remove every obstacle)?
>can they clean hard to reach spots behind doors
Robovacs aren't a drop-in replacement for a maid, they aren't a fire and forget cleaning solution for a house that's already dirty and messy or have constant spills and stuff left on the floor, but more for regular maintenance of an orderly place that still gets cleaned or maintained in the tough to reach places every now and then.
But if your place resembles a crack house, a robovac won't magically clean it.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#109If you've used any non-iRobot vacuum alternatives in the last 5 years and ever owned a Roomba in the past there should be nothing surprising about this headline. It's shocking to me how good Roborock mop-vacuums are for example, Eufy vacuums are nice as well. They still run into unavoidable issues, but they're: much quieter even at their highest setting; show you how they map out the space; allow you to easily custom…
I read a story about Dreame. The founder worked in aerospace, but wanted to make a mass-produced motor with aerospace standards. So he modelled air flow using aerospace tools, built the motor to tight tolerances. Conventional vacuum motors run at 30k rpm, his runs at 100k rpm. Then he standardises on a single motor, for all his devices, robovacs, stick vacs etc, so he gets scale.
Well now I’m sold
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#110If you've used any non-iRobot vacuum alternatives in the last 5 years and ever owned a Roomba in the past there should be nothing surprising about this headline. It's shocking to me how good Roborock mop-vacuums are for example, Eufy vacuums are nice as well. They still run into unavoidable issues, but they're: much quieter even at their highest setting; show you how they map out the space; allow you to easily custom…
I read a story about Dreame. The founder worked in aerospace, but wanted to make a mass-produced motor with aerospace standards. So he modelled air flow using aerospace tools, built the motor to tight tolerances. Conventional vacuum motors run at 30k rpm, his runs at 100k rpm. Then he standardises on a single motor, for all his devices, robovacs, stick vacs etc, so he gets scale.
Dyson's stick vac motors have been above 100k RPM for almost two decades.