iRobot Roomba 880

The iRobot Roomba 880 is a robotic vacuum cleaner that helps people to clean their houses automatically. The biggest advantage of this vacuum is that it is so intelligent that I don't need to charge, start or stop it. It can automatically find the location of the charger and charge itself when the power is low. As long as I set the clean time, it can also automatically start and stop and this can greatly reduce my performance load both cognitively and kinematically. If it is too far away from the charger or could not find the charger, there will be a female voice speaking "Please charge Roomba". According to the model of social influence in virtual environment, a more human like avatar is more credible than a non-human like avatar. Me and my roommate often imitate that or talk to the vacuum at home because the avatar sounds just like human being and we both find it credible.

In addition, there are five buttons on the robot but I rarely use the four little ones. It perfectly match the 80/20 Rule because most of the usage of this vacuum is credits to the big "clean" button. A good part of it is that the designer made the "clean" very big and bright so that people can see that at first glance.

Other than that, this vacuum makes a lot of errors. Because it is an automatic vacuum, it cannot detect what is in front of it. Sometimes it vacuums things that shouldn't be vacuumed, such as chargers and dog poops. It once vacuumed the dog poop in my roommate's room and it took us a whole semester to get rid of that smell. There is no constraint built in the vacuum that prevents it from errors.

I think this vacuum is not as functional as I thought it would be. It might be because of the expectation effect. My expectation towards this vacuum is pretty high due to its high price and intelligent system. However, its performance does not equal the money we paid. I would prefer a manual vacuum rather than this.