标签: irobot

来自美国的全球家用机器人行业领导者iRobot在中国市场推出一支《处|女座更懂处|女座》创意微电影。一个拥有“洁癖、强迫症、完美主义”三大典型标签的女主角甄选家政公司的清洁阿姨。在面试数个优秀阿姨后，女主角依然不满意。最终一位大个子肌肉男得到聘用。而这位清洁工可不是被安排做清洁的，而是专门负责搬起各类家具，以便让女主角用专业工具将床底沙发底的沉灰污垢彻底清洁。 当受众大跌眼镜的时候，iRobot旗下明星产品——Roomba缓缓从沙发底部驶出，在地毯上得心应手地清扫，并且自信地说道——“扫地是件专业性小事，其实你不必亲力亲为。iRobot**座扫地机器人，不放过一处暗角”。 这支视频上线仅3日，全网播放超过500万次。观众纷纷留言击中处|女座的内心，很想拥有这款体贴处|女座的扫地机器人。iRobot扫地机器人Roomba诞生于2002年9月17日，是个天生的处|女座。因此，她一生的职业——地板清洁便与她的洁癖性格息息相关。Roomba集结了iRobot旗下多款专业机器人的技术所长，是一款集大成的家用产品。只需轻轻一按，即可清扫全屋，是继自动洗衣机之后一款释放主妇双手的清洁神器。 这支处|女座专题视频拉开了Roomba13周岁生日庆典的序幕。据悉，iRobot将于9月17日在上海兴国宾馆举办Roomba13周岁趴体。处|女座明星杜江、Roomba老用户及9月17日同日生的处|女座们都将参加本次活动。

The first iRobot Roomba floor cleaner unit was a tremendous breakthrough when introduced in 2002. It made the vague and confusing concept of a useful robot real and tangible. It did so by providing a sophisticated, autonomous robot that offered a meaningful, demonstrable function and made it into a consumer-market success.   Since then, iRobot has introduced many consumer, commercial, and military robots for a variety of applications including cleaning rain gutters, searching through collapsed buildings, and investigating explosive devices. The Roomba also showed how far the various underlying technologies embedded within it—motion control, sensors, algorithms, power subsystems, and more—had advanced.   Their latest specialized iRobot model is one which mows lawns, which seems to make a lot of sense: it's a task which is definable, done over a limited area, and which most people would rather not do (or elect to pay someone to do for them). Such lawn mowers are already offered by other vendors; the article " Astronomers See Robotic Mowers Invading Their Space in FCC Fight " has some interesting numbers on their world-wide sales. For any autonomous mower, the problem must literally be "bounded", with the area to be mowed delineated in some way.   That's where there's a potential problem. iRobot has asked permissions from the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the US to set RF beacons operating between 6.240 and 6.740 GHz as markers on the periphery of the lawn or field. Competing mowers used buried wires to form a boundary loop (similar to the invisible fence used to keep dogs in the yard). A typical area to be mowed would need between five and ten of these beacons, each mounted on a pole about 2 feet (2/3 meter) high.   The problem is that astronomers such as those at the Green Bank, Virginia, National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) as well as other locations, use 6.650 to 6.6752 GHz as the spectral band for "seeing" methanol in space ( Figure ). Methanol (CH 3 OH), with a 6.66852 GHz spectral signature, is associated with star-forming activity, which is used as a beacon to estimate distances and track the path of what is called "galactic evolution." Obviously, that methanol signature is determined by the laws of physics and can't be shifted. The received signal flux from various radio sources is almost unimaginably tiny, on the order of 10 −26 watts per square meter per hertz (called one Jansky in radio astronomy metrology) with extremely difficult SNRs (signal-to-noise ratios), which are below -100 to -150 dB.   The Green Bank Telescope is 485 feet (148 meters) high. It weighs 17 million pounds (7700 metric tonnes) with a dish area of 2.3 acres (1.7 hectares). It is the largest moving structure on land, and the largest fully-steerable telescope in the world (photo provided by NRAO).   The NRAO astronomers would like the beacons kept at least 55 miles (90 kilometers) from a radio telescope. The area around Green Bank is already restricted to be a very quiet RF zone by regulation: no cell phones, no transmitters, nothing that might cause RFI in the truest sense of the phrase. The specifics and recommendations for RF levels near radio telescopes are even called out in ITU documents, see References.   The request from iRobot is for an exemption to the FCC declaration that the methanol band is protected spectrum. The company says the fears are exaggerated, and once hills and trees are factored in, no robot lawn mower will operate within interference range. The company adds that the potential for interference is limited due to the low power, intermittent use, and low radiation angle of the beacons. They have even offered to put notices about appropriate beacon locations in the user's manual. (You can read the various back-and-forth statements: the waiver application from iRobot , the comments from NRAO , the response from iRobot , and the reply from NRAO .)   Of course, RF beacons on stakes are less of a headache and much more flexible for users than the buried wire loop. I can only speculate why iRobot decided against a GPS-based marker system: was it due to one or more issues of cost, system complexity, and ease of installation and configuration? Even so, why go for 6.240 to 6.740 GHz, instead of some other band slivers: was it related to propagation, wavelength, convenient antenna sizing and configuration, or other?   What's your view on this? Are the NRAO fears legitimate, or overstated? Have you ever had a super-sensitive RF measurement corrupted by an unexpected source which was difficult to locate?   References ITU Recommendation ITU-R M.1583, " Interference calculations between non-geostationary mobile-satellite service or radionavigation-satellite service systems and radio astronomy telescope sites . ITU Recommendation RA.769-2: " Protection criteria for radioastronomical measurements” (ITU 2003) , " Radio Telescopes ", "" Single Dish Radio Telescopes ," Chapter 3, Jayaram, N. Chengalur.

有媒体报道说，iRobot公司已经与ColorWare商定允许用户按照自己的想法和喜好，定制自己的800系列Roomba匹配他们喜欢的一切。原本以为，媒体说的“随心定制”业务是可以根据自己的爱好及需求，定制产品的颜色、外形以及特殊功能等，结果看到结尾，iRobot对定制业务的描述是iRobot公司表示,合作内容里面包含了让使用Roomba 800 系列的客户，定制他们的机器人来匹配他们喜欢的颜色或衬托他们的家,让它比以往任何机器人都适合顾客的房子，公寓或宿舍。 我们想要的更多。扫地机器人作为一款家用产品，很多用户希望能有更多更有趣的形状，而不是现在千篇一律的“圆饼脸”，这样即使不用的时候放在角落，也可以作为一个摆设为家居增添美。不同的家庭，对扫地机器人的要求可能会略有不同，可能他们对某些功能并不那么在意，但是对另外一些功能却又迫切的需求，如果iRobot能提供对功能的定制业务，可能会吸引更多的用户，也更衬得起其高端品牌的定位。