It also has one flat side, so it has more in common with the Neato Botvac than previous Dyson vacs – superficially, at least. The most interesting change for this product, though, is the new shape. Dyson’s previous vacuums, the bissell crosswave cordless 360 Eye and 360 Heurist, have been taller and narrower than rival products built by iRobot and the like. This allows them tighter cornering around items like chair legs, but stops them from vacuuming under some furniture.
New models will come out with new features and options and eventually there will be a clear winner. Back in the old days when we were all young children (2002 – 2014), robot vacuums relied on audio and touch-sensitive sensors to detect objects and obstacles. According to Dyson, most other robot vacuums use “weak, inefficient motors” in order to conserve battery life. British engineering company Dyson has announced its first robot vacuum cleaner at an event in Tokyo.
Of course, those could be trade-show tricks, which is why we’re looking forward to getting the 360 Eye in for more comprehensive testing. Until then, you can read about what we know—and hear about the new robot vacuum direct from Alex Knox, Dyson’s design director. Likewise, while the 360 Heurist offers three suction shark cordless power settings to help almost doubling the standard 40-minute runtime, I’m inclined to believe that a few minutes will still be deducted in real life. Whether it’s worth that much money to pick up a 360 Eye will depend on your commitment to achieving a clean house without being too personally involved in the process.
Too little and it would take most or all of the focus of one human to manage one robot, which may be appropriate in special situations like explosive-ordnance disposal but is otherwise not efficient. Too much autonomy and you’d start to have issues with trust, safety, and explainability. After a couple of shark cordless minutes, RoMan hasn’t moved—it’s still sitting there, pondering the tree branch, arms poised like a praying mantis. In chaotic, unfamiliar, or poorly defined settings, reliance on rules makes robots notoriously bad at dealing with anything that could not be precisely predicted and planned for in advance.
Until Thursday’s announcement, the 360 Eye’s prototype was hidden, even from Dyson employees, under a black sheet in a display room in Chicago. And Dyson still is keeping the device’s price point under wraps, though its top-of-the-line competitor, the iRobot Roomba 880, retails for $699.99. Ultimately, though the 360 Eye’s real limiting factor is the price tag, which runs $999 in the U.S. (and an even steeper $1,299 in my home country of Canada). That’s a lot of cash, and $100 more than the top of the line offering from iRobot’s Roomba lineup. Other than on the iRobot i7+, you’ll need to empty the bin of your robot regularly – they’re always small.