iRobot Scooba 230

Goodbye Kanta Bai. This robot mops the floor, and does it even when you’re not home

Vacuum cleaners have evolved into robot-cleaners with artificial intelligence. But most of them are just that—vacuum cleaners. And for many, especially in India, that’s simply not enough. The floor has to be scrubbed with a wet mop for any cleaning exercise to be effective. So let’s welcome the New iRobot Scooba 230. Its makers call it a floor-washing robot. But Indian homebodies will know what it really is—a mechanised pochha with artificial intelligence.

The iRobot Scooba 230 will therefore win a lot of fans in India, even though it has many limitations—some of which would have been fatal in any other gadget. The biggest drawback: it does only half the job. You still need a good old vacuum cleaner or broom to get dust off the floor.

Now, to what it can do. It scrubs any hard floor with water. It stores the dirty water and waits for you to empty and refill it with clean water. This is easy, though. Flip it over, and the bottom plate comes out—just like that. Just change the water, clean the brushes, and it is ready for the
next day. No more fighting with allegedly ‘easy to open’ latches and click locks. Like other robot cleaners, it can work independently while no one is home. And the best part is, it even scrubs the floor of a wet and slippery bathroom.

The Scooba has three cleaning modes. Its ‘simple wash’ programme gives the floor a wet wash. Its ‘scrub’ mode gets rid of stubborn dirt and grime that might be stuck in little crevices. And its ‘squeegee’ mode slurps dirty water up, leaving the floor dry. Its software and sensors keep it from knocking furniture and falling off stairs. Charmingly, it goes right till the edge before drawing back.

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Gagandeep Singh Sapra