iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

In addition to vacuuming both floors and carpets without sucking in rug fringe, the new generation of robots can sense when to slow down around furniture and walls. "The robot sends out a beam of infrared light and when the light gets bounced back to the robot it says, 'OK, I'm near a wall. I should slow down a bit before I hit this wall,'" Preneta said. The Roomba, apparently, is also robust enough to carry around a camera while it vacuums, as a CNET News.com senior reporter making a Roomba's-eye-view video demonstrates in this photo.

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

To solve the problem of getting a round object into a square hole, iRobot modified the robot's extending brush. The Roomba 500 series features a six-arm rotating brush that tilts at an angle while rotating to get dust out of corners.

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

While previous incarnations of the Roomba did allow for virtual walls to restrict where the robot could travel, the Roomba 560 works by what iRobot refers to as lighthouses. These are beacons that can be put in places like doorways to automatically communicate with the Roomba whenever it's on. Each lighthouse beacon takes two C batteries and can instruct the Roomba to finish cleaning one room completely before moving on to the next and then guide it back to its home base for recharging when it's done. As with the virtual walls, the lighthouse beacons can also bar the Roomba from a room completely. Using the lighthouse system, the Roomba 560 takes about 35 minutes to clean one room, according to Preneta.

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

Previously, users had to either flip rug tassels underneath the rug, or use a virtual wall to block their Roomba from sucking up rug fringe. That is no longer an issue. The Roomba 500 series robots will go from hardwood to carpet and back, self-regulating for the change in texture and height. It will reverse brush movement to spit out things like wires or rug tassels when it begins to suck them in. The change is part of iRobot's effort to make its robots more robust and convince the average homeowner that the robots can truly be left to their own devices, according to Preneta.

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

Unlike previous generations, the Roomba 500 series is upgradable. iRobot plans to make firmware upgrades available down the road for different functions and parts. "There's the ability using this modularity to basically upgrade every major subsystem in this by just ordering that subsystem off the Web...So that allows the purchaser to realize they've got a robot that's going to live with them for a long time, and if we come up with something better they'll be able to ride that," Preneta said. "This model is built like a tank, and we are excited about having a long future with this. And then as we create new cool stuff, we can use this chassis as the vehicle to deliver that stuff to our customers," Preneta said. Angle estimated that the Roomba 500 series robots, if scheduled to clean every single day, could last about three to five years.

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

What about the dog and cat issues? While Preneta didn't specifically say whether the new, "robust" Roomba will survive the pounce of a 100-pound Labrador, he did say it survived many drop tests from about 5 feet. Preneta also said the new Roomba 500 series does a better job of picking up pet hair lodged into carpets compared with upright vacuums because its rubber and bristle brushes beat against the carpet in addition to applying suction. "We've done tons and tons of testing in hairy environments, for lack of a better way to put it," he said.

This is a roomba vacuum

It runs on rechargeable batteries and cleans all the cat hair and dirt from our floor!

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

On Wednesday, iRobot plans to release a new generation of vacuuming robots to the public. I got a chance to test out iRobot's new Roomba 500 series ahead of time and got a private demonstration with iRobot CEO Colin Angle and Josh Preneta, the Roomba 500 series product manager. The Roomba 530, which goes for $300, allows for two virtual walls to restrict robot room access and can clean about three rooms per charge. The Roomba 560 (pictured here) goes for $350 and offers routine scheduling, a new method of timed movement control between rooms, and can clean about four rooms per charge. Text by Candace Lombardi, staff writer, CNET News.com.

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

The Roomba 560 comes with a home base for recharging the robot, a power cord, two rotating brushes that can be removed for cleaning, a dustbin with filter and two "Lighthouse" beacons to control movement from room to room. The Roomba 560 also has a round silver sensor in the brush cradle. This sensor on both the 530 and 560 models senses the amount of dirt blowing past it and adjusts the robot's movement accordingly. The sensor will keep the Roomba vacuuming over a particularly dirty area until it senses less dust being taken in.

iRobot's new 'robust' Roomba

What's the biggest thing a Roomba has ever been able to suck up? "The biggest thing ever sucked up by a Roomba was a dead rat that was hiding under somebody's--well, actually, it was a reporter's--bed," said iRobot CEO Colin Angle. "Yeah, they were demo-testing in a home and it came out and the guy opened it up and there was a dead rat in the Roomba. It had died underneath his bedside table, or his bed or something like that and he never knew. So, that was kind of extreme...It was not a large rat," he said. The Roomba 500 series robots have larger dustbins and come with an extra filter. The filter, which is also about a third larger than the one on previous models, is still not a HEPA (high-efficiency particulate air) filter. Angle argued that a HEPA is unnecessary because the Roomba is designed to kick out much less air than an upright vacuum does.