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iRobot Roomba’s Virtual Walls and Lighthouses
By | October 17, 2009
One of the great things about the iRobot Roomba robot cleaner is the fact that this tiny piece of innovation comes with Virtual Walls. The purpose behind this function is to create an invisible barrier that the Roomba will not cross. The walls can be set to block a certain portion that goes as far as eight feet long.
The Virtual Wall beam is shaped like a keyhole. A beam is set to create a small halo that prevents the robot from bumping into the wall. A larger cone-shaped section then impedes the cleaner from going into places you marked as restricted.
The higher models, such as the iRobot Roomba 535, come with Virtual Wall Lighthouses that were created to help the Roomba navigate around your home, find the Home Base, and allow the Roomba to clean one room before proceeding to its next task. When you set the robot to the Virtual Wall mode, you can indicate areas that are off-limits and assure yourself that the cleaner will never cross the line.As you know robots especially robot cleaners do as they’re told!
When it is set to the Lighthouse mode, the Virtual Wall Lighthouse helps irobot Roomba navigate around the room and clean an area at a time. All you need to do is place the lighthouses in the doorway between the two rooms.The irobot cleaner will begin to clean the first room before it navigates to the next room. Once the irobot Roomba has completed cleaning, it uses the lighthouses as guide to navigate itself back to its Homebase.
The generations of irobot vacuum cleaner units continue to improve . Its ultimate goal is to make cleaning easier for homemakers.
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