A Domestic Robot That Will Keep Floors Neato!

I mentioned the Neato XV-11 a while back at DomesRO but things have been quiet at the Neato front since back then. The great news, for those waiting, is that Neato will be shipping out the XV-11 soon (in about 2 - 3 weeks) to online retailers like Amazon, Hammacher and others. This 80's retro looking floor cleaning robot will be retailing for US $399 and will be the first domestic robot with SLAM technology at an affordable price.

The XV-11 brings many goodies to the domestic floor cleaning battlefield; cleaning weapons like:

• Single pass floor cleaning
• True room mapping
• Auto docking and charging
• High powered suction vacuum
• Rectangular front design so it can get close to walls and corners
• Efficient cleaning on all types of floor surfaces (tile, carpet, stone, linoleum and pergo)
• Low profile so it can clean under many types of domestic furniture
• Simple and user friendly interface
• Scheduler

But there are a few things that need a closer look. Things like not having side brushes, cleaning session maximum run time, performance on picking up hair (human, animal and/or alien), maintenance effort & cost just to name a few. I do not know why we still do not have a floor cleaning robot that is fully autonomous like the Karcher RC3000?! Is it that hard to make? Let us see, maybe if I just wished upon a star. Here are some videos with the Neato XV-11 in action and how the SLAM works (you can actually see a human following it!). Enjoy.