For that home or apartment with tile or hardwood floors, the weekend usually brings the chore of sweeping and mopping.
It is typically not a fun aspect of life and can be dreadfully unpleasant, depending on the square footage of your apartment or home. The corners can get especially troublesome, as they accumulate most of the dust and dirt.
If you are unsure whether a Roomba could sweep up the dust and grime in the corners of a room, you can rest assured that it can. These little marvels, especially the latest versions of robotic sweepers, are excellent in collecting dust and clutter from the floor, including corners.
With a Roomba, the dull weekend chore of sweeping and vacuuming your hard floors can become a thing of the past. Read on to learn all about these robotic helpers and how they clear away dust and particles that find their way into the corners of your house or apartment.
Roomba Bristles Conquer Corners
The modern Roomba operates with two sets of spinning bristles.
A set on the front and another grouping along the side.
Whether the Roomba is running the straight length of the baseboard or cruising into a corner, a Roomba is prepared to meet the challenge.
One might think that a round-shaped Roomba attempting to negotiate cleaning a square corner is not going to work well, but the Roomba will surprise you.
- The edges of these bristles extend past the body of the Roomba, which means that the rugged polymer strands hit the dirt and dust bunnies far before the rounded edge of the Roomba does.
- The Roomba will flick the dirt and dust from the corner and then turn and pick it up on its journey across the floor.
Although the Roomba works primarily in straight 90-degree directional angles, the bristles are spinning in a 360-degree pattern.
Roomba Edge Function
For modern Roomba models, you can change the setting either on the unit itself or through the Roomba app on your phone.
The Roomba has an “edge” setting which will keep the Roomba moving along the perimeter of the room, edging up against the walls.
This can be a very useful setting for when you want to ensure your Roomba is tidying up all of your corner muck. Because your Roomba has bristles that knock the dirt and dust from the edge into its main path, the “edge” setting can do a thorough job of deep cleaning the edges of your room, including the corners.
In fact, this can be just as effective, if not more so, than using a conventional push vacuum along the edges of your room.
The only advantage push vacuums have is their hose attachments, but those require a great deal of cumbersome handling.
How Does a Roomba Clean?
When the innovative Roomba made its first splash on the market in 2002, most consumers did not seriously consider it a cleaning aid.
Most thought this approach to dusting tile or wood floors to be more of a space-age toy, an electric novelty for those who had money to waste.
While the earlier models had a few issues, Roomba continued to improve and innovate.
The by-product of this innovation and improvement is a robotic cleaner that most often does as good a job sweeping as you can.
Without getting overly technical, the main functionality of a Roomba is its algorithm.
Think of it as code that spells out how the Roomba memorizes its space and the direction it needs to go. Along with the memory comes the scheduled timer that activates the Roomba.
Anyone who has purchased the top-of-the-line Roomba lately will tell you the Roombas of today have gotten a lot smarter. Today’s Roomba:
- Sports a radical new shape
- Comes with infrared technology
This new sensor array helps the Roomba create three-dimensional imagery that helps it map out space in front of it and clear away the dust and whatever particles it finds much quicker.
Efficient and easy to program, a Roomba makes cleanup a lot more pleasant.
Roomba Design
A little-known fact about the original Roomba is its distant cousin, the 310 SUGV, served alongside troops in Afghanistan for military use.
These little Roombas often had a one-way ticket because the soldiers used them to dispose of explosives.
Seven years ago, in 2014, the iRobot Corporation chose to switch gears and focus on the home market.
Even then, the challenge of producing a marketable product like the Roomba at an affordable price was daunting.
With the advent of improved miniaturization, Roomba managed to pull it off.
Four years later, Roomba introduced the Roomba i7 robot vacuum cleaner at the cost of about $950 with a clean base.
Although spending almost $1,000 may seem to many of us a little steep, when you factor in the back-breaking work doing all the cleaning yourself or the costs of having a professional come in and sweep and mop your floors, the tiny Roomba is worth it.
Memory Muscle
With a Roomba, it is not up to you to activate it and follow it around to make sure it does all the work for you.
The first thing needed is to set your Roomba free to roam about the house so it can learn the space on its own. Already, you are getting to take a hands-off approach.
Your Roomba needs to flex its memory muscle and learn where all the furniture is and the square footage it needs to cover.
If it finds a spot in your house, like a set of stairs, there is the remote possibility it might take a header down them, but most Roombas will not.
- The newer Roombas are more intelligent than older versions.
- Each Roomba today comes equipped with “cliff sensors.” It will sense when there is a ledge or a cliff, such as the start of a stairway.
- When it does sense a cliff or stairway, it will stop and back up.
Remember that a Roomba comes out of the box not knowing the inside of your house.
Let it scoot along and memorize the rooms in your home, then program when you want it to get to work, and watch it clean up, and dock itself in its base all by itself.
Do Roombas Hurt Baseboards?
First-time users of a Roomba may notice tiny spots along the baseboards caused by the spinning bristle brushes of the Roomba. The Roomba bristles do not strike the baseboard with enough force to cause damage.
In most instances, these nicks are due to inferior paint quality like what you typically see in rental property. On a new Roomba, you may see a smudge line made by the bristles.
Do not worry. You can wipe it off.
Over time, your Roomba will clean without leaving a trace. If you are genuinely concerned that your Roomba will damage baseboards or furniture, attach a set of exterior bumpers.
These bumpers will protect the following items around your house:
- Baseboards
- Furniture
- Your own feet and your pets’ feet
At around $2 each, the bumpers will give you peace of mind that your robotic cleaner is not tearing anything up.
Automatic and surprisingly efficient, today’s robotic housemaid will get the floors of your apartment or house clean and do it daily if you need.
Can roombas clean corners? Conclusion
The Roomba robot cleaner has come a long way from its humble inception in 2002. The military used members of the Roomba family to dispose of explosives, and now they are a frequent household commodity used to keep floors clean, including pesky corners.
If you are into programming your robotic helper and then letting it do all the work without you barely having to lift a finger, then getting a Roomba is something you are going to want to check out.
