IndustrialVacuums
Latest
iRobot's Dirt Dog: Roomba gets a 'tude
So you've got Roomba on carpet duty and a couple Scoobas taking care of the kitchen and bathrooms, but who's cleaning up that mess of a workshop where you spend most of your time getting your hacks and mods on? Well up until now you had to rely on your own prowess with a shopvac (meaning that nothing ever actually got tidied up), but thanks to the good folks at iRobot, the bad-ass Dirt Dog is coming to get your back. The same size and shape as the more timid Roomba -- meaning all your current batteries, remotes, and charging bases are compatible -- Dirt Dog comes equipped with a 40% larger debris bin along with specially designed brushes to sweep up caked-on dirt, heavy debris, and other messes that are "too dirty for a regular vacuum." This new $130 dog will be taking a bite out of some of your toughest cleaning chores starting on Friday, but you gotta make sure that it doesn't wander out of your workspace and into the rest of the house -- it probably won't pee on your couch, but those 1,000 RPM brushes will shred your shag carpets, scratch the hell out of your polished hardwood, and -- if you have a significant other -- get you confined to the garage for the rest of your natural life.Update: So it looks like the vicious Dirt Dog isn't the only upcoming member of the iRobot family. A Cnet article tipped us off to a new military bot that the company is working on -- called the NEO Mover -- and a little digging around turned up a few solid deets. Touted as the PackBot's big brother, NEO is apparently a 200-pound robot that can haul cargo Big Dog-style, and interestingly enough, is also said to be able to "move like a soldier" -- not sure what that means, but we won't make any snarky comments for fear of a swift and deadly reprisal. Like PackBot, the NEO Mover will also serve as a demolition expert of sorts, detecting explosives and presumably sacrificing its own well-being so that its human overlords can remain safely packed into their Hummers.[Via The Raw Feed]
