The original Scooba floor cleaning robot never quite caught on like Roomba, its carpet-cleaning sibling. It was big, bulky, and kind of a mess to deal with—you had to wrestle to get clean water in and dirty water out, and it sometimes left floors soaking wet, not so bad for vinyl or tile, but not so good for hardwood.
That left an opening for other approaches to floor cleaning robots, like the Mint from Evolution Robotics.
But Scooba is back. The Scooba 230 announced at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas is smaller, cheaper at $300, and its tiny tanks are easier to fill and empty. At 16 cm in diameter and 9 cm high, the company says, it can get into small spaces and around furniture, but it can still scrub 14 square meters in a session.
Tekla S. Perry
Tekla S. Perry is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., she's been covering the people, companies, and technology that make Silicon Valley a special place for more than 40 years. An IEEE member, she holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Michigan State University.
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