Dubai: The Bedford-based company iRobot’s round robot — Scooba 450 — is designed for hard floor-scrubbing that tackles stuck-on mess on a small floor area.
It can clean about 300 square feet area for 40 minutes before it needs to be charged again.
It is really a replacement for mop and dirty water bucket to clean the rooms and it is also a partial replacement of maids.
The iAdapt navigation technology helps to clean up the mess and navigate under and around furniture without damaging household objects. The smart and built-in sensors avoid carpets, rugs, stairs and other drop offs.
It is easy to operate and don’t need a manual to be read before starting the device.
There are three backlit buttons top. The biggest button is for on/off the device to clean, the i (information) button will flash various colours to let the user know the status in verbal voice and the room size button is for selecting the size (small/big) of the room.
The water tank inside is equipped with two separate compartments — one for 750ml clean water to be used for cleaning and the other one for collecting the waste water after cleaning. The good thing is that the waste water is not reused to clean the floor. It can scrub up to 28 square meters with one full tank of water.
A cleaning liquid can be added to the water tank to ease the cleaning process.
There is no smartphone app for auto scheduling the process. It would have been better if it had so. Even though it is called a robot, it does not return to the docking station and human interaction is needed to charge it.
By turning it on and leaving the Scooba to do the dirty work, users can relax on the sofa or do any other work.
It first sweeps up the dust while pouring a thin layer of cleaning solution. Then the brush starts to spin and scrubs the hard floor and one part squeegee vacuum suctions dirty water off the floor. The scrubbing brush spins over 600 revolutions per minute to remove grime. It cannot clean the entire home in one go.
The interesting part is that Scooba passes over every section of the floor multiple times to ensure thorough cleaning is done without making much noise like a regular vacuum cleaner. One bad part is that it does not make the floor dry and some of the hair and debris does not get sucked into the reservoir instead get stuck on the roller on the bottom. The other bad part is that it does not clean the corners as the device is round in shape.
It has a handle to carry it but weighs close to four kilos. Cleaning the robot is easy as the brushes are removable.
Charging the device from scratch to full takes close to two hours. It is an ideal investment if users value their time. It is priced at Dh3,199.
