I've had a Roomba, and I've manually cleaned a floor.
There's nothing dumb about not having to vacuum and mop.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
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The best argument I heard for getting one of these was an appeal to laziness.
Either the robot vacuum cleans the floor, or it simply doesn't happen unless it gets bad enough to justify the time spent doing it. It's better to live in a house with perpetually clean floors rather than one where the floors get bad enough until you're forced to take action.
Roombas aren't designed for commercial spaces.
Yeah, this looks like a store inside a mall. If they used one of their vacuums, it'd not be contained within the store since they just kinda drive around until they hit a wall or come to a ledge before changing directions.
I highly doubt they are concerned about the privacy of their own business, which is the only reason a normal person should not be using these unless you know how to disable their ability to phone home.
They can store maps so that they don't go out of a designated area.
Only the fancy pants ones. The cheap ones are like blind bumblebees that clean by accident while running headlong into every wall. I dunno if a shop would risk using expensive ones when underpaying a cleaner is cheaper. There's a message here but I'm too tired to see it. I wonder if you actually did the math, how expensive would hiring a cleaning service match up to buying one of the fancy robot vacuums?
An off-brand one i found on residential waste 6 years ago (broken lidar motor, 5 quid in spare parts) has internal maps. They really don't have to be fancy pants for this in this year of our lord 2026 where disposable vapes have the chips to run a webserver.
Roombas have also had "beacons" before they had any competition. You could set two of them up to block it from leaving.
I also have a hard time imagining that if a Roomba store chose to use its bots in the store, they would go with the cheapest model instead of showing off one of their top models.
Maybe the ones around here are just garbage then. The first one I bought for $120 AUD 4 years ago didn't have a map
random roomba going around the entire floor of the mall vaccuming around
Are there open-source alternatives, or any DIY projects?
I've seen 3D printer files for the case. What else do you need besides some wheels, some circuitry, a battery, some lidar or ultrasonic rangefinders, a microcontroller, and some code?
Doesn't seem too difficult if you know how to solder and can find instructions. The hardest part would be programming it, but if the code already exists...
I found this:
https://github.com/alvitawa/stofzuigerrobot
but it's a 7 years old unmantained project
I also found out about oomwoo
https://github.com/makerspet/oomwoo
Some people say that it's made with AI or smth so be aware (and it's not even complete yet)
I want one but with a frame like R2D2, and it will communicate through a series of beeps and boops. Maybe binary or ternary except the bits are determined by tonality, with modulation to express emotion. And maybe little extendible arms that can fix space ships and hack battle stations and zap enemies and
It takes me a fraction of the time to sweep/vacuum/mop the floor compared to my robot, but the difference is the robot takes a fraction of my time since I can start it and let it run with the odd bit of maintenance and sometimes rescuing it when it gets trapped or sucked up something it shouldn't.
It's not a panacea, I still have to ensure that the area is fully clean except for the sweeping and mopping portion. However, as long as I keep up on that part, I can let the robot run overnight and have clean floors in the morning.
The ones which can handle long hair and dog fur are a godsend.
I don't get the hate, I swear by these. I have one that vacuums and mops.
I think it's about expectation management.
These by no means replace actual cleaning. Not in the least because they only handle your floor and there's more shit that needs cleaning. Besides if I put my back into it I clean the whole apartment in a fraction of the time this machine only does the floors.
However, this machine runs when i'm not home, so It could work at it for 8 hours and that would still be fine. Moreso, to do that it only needs a fraction of my time.
The reality is that I have this machine running way more than I myself can be arsed to manually maintain the floors and the net result is that I have cleaner feeling home with almost no time invested. Considering I have about 3 hours of actual me time on an average working day this is a big deal to me.
Some poeple see them as a symptom of wealth, or deranged addiction to gadgets, but honestly this machine is no different to a dishwasher.
You could realisticly wash your dishes in half an hour instead of the three hours the machine takes. But that machine only needs to be packed with the dirty dishes and fed a tablet, and occasionally you need to top up the salt and and rinse aid. Whatever time it needs to actually clean your dishes isn't really an obstacle because you're using it on something else. (which may or may not include doing absolutely fuck all)
I LOVE mine, the Eufy version with base station. Collects so much dog hair I'd otherwise be cleaning myself. App can be very wonky though.
Protip. If you have a pet, DO NOT run it without checking the floor first or use auto scheduling. Ask me how I know.
Agreed. I’ve had two. Used then for over 10 years. I get furniture specifically that clear the floor enough so the bot gets underneath everything.
Its something with the continuous work that just doesn’t let dust build up which helps so much.
It also forces me to not litter the floors. So it helps me tidy up.
A Roomba in a public space is a trip hazard.
A quick sweep is a way to keep busy when there are no customers.
As others have said they aren't a full replacement for a thorough human vacuum/sweep and mop. But it takes care of the daily maintenance to the point where I only need to do the full work up every three or four weeks rather than every weekend.
Also, first, this store doesn’t seem self-contained, so eventually the robot will start sweeping/vacuuming the entire mall. And second, it would be a hazard to have this thing cleaning when there are a bunch of people walking buy and into the store. People typically don’t set their roombas to start cleaning when they have a bunch of guests over.
First issue is solved by modern vaccuum robots: they have a map of the place they clean, and you can tell them which area to stay in. Anyway, the rest of the points still stand :)
Even the old ones before mapping had little beacons you could place to dictate off limits areas
If your robot is dumb enough to wander off. Maybe that's not a selling point....
Especially when you are there the most expensive and least feature equipped of the robot vacuums
“You’re just a wage slave. A rag on a stick is good enough for you.”
They'd probably not want u to steal the merchandise roaming the floor
That is a very old pic. The logo has been different for a while, they don’t really sell those robots anymore, they went bankrupt and got bought by a Chinese company. iRobot created the vacuum robot and failed at staying in the game.
My cats love my vacuum robot!
They are not magic. You gotta watch the dang things. Mine ate a dental pick the other day, so I pulled it out and sent him on his way. He started choking again, and I turned him off. When I got around to inspecting it, it was another dental pick, just jammed farther up his craw.
And they are tiny. The cruft builds up fast. I've got long hair and 2 cats. I have to empty the dustbin after a single use, and I have to pull the roller and cut out the hair every 3 uses.
But they get under shit that I would never clean. My place is way less dusty due to the robot going under stuff and cleaning it all.
And they also clean when you don't want to. That's really nice. I think I'll send mine on a mission now...
Damn we got one and struck gold, it has a razor blade that cuts the pet hair off the brush on its own!
Mine was not very expensive. Amazon refurb, I think. Robot 360.
It has a small tool with a razor and a brush. Definitely does not clean itself tho.
it'd get stolen in 5mins.
Yeah, kidnapping a human is a whole thing. A Roomba can barely fight back and weighs a lot less.
I had one before my dog, wife and kids came along was so nice.
I have one and it's amazing
Kärcher RCV5 ftw and I'm in the US. It's a German company, and when I saw how good their industrial automated stuff was at work, i was sold! No, I swear I don't work for them. But of all the automated tech I've watched at shows and demos, their stuff was beyond the competition.
For anyone privacy-focused, I also went this route as all communication is done to German servers within the app, not US based, so privacy is a lot better!
https://www.kaercher.com/us/home-garden/robot-vacuums-and-mops/rcv-5-12696450.html
Have you tried the window washer robot?
No, I didn't even realize they made a robot for that. I thought about a power washer and wet/dry vac next bc I would like a new vac for the cars.
My mother loved hers. Not that she would have bought one, mind you (I gifted a basic model to her), but the thing can do one very important thing: Clean under the bed without reminding you you're getting old.
If it ever reads your mind, then just badger it with conflicting scenarios until it kills itself
D'hoe...