One robot is never enough

Buy a girl a robot, and the next thing you know, she wants another one:

iRobot CEO Colin Angle will offer a “sneak preview” today of the company’s latest innovation, the iRobot Scooba™ Robotic Floor Washer. The Scooba will be unveiled at The Wall Street Journal’s “D: All Things Digital” conference in Carlsbad, Calif. Scooba, a next-generation robot, is designed to vacuum, scrub and dry hard floors automatically. The new robot builds on technology advances from the company’s runaway hit, the iRobot Roomba® Robotic Floorvac.

In addition, iRobot today announces a partnership with The Clorox Company through which the two firms have developed a specially engineered cleaning solution for Scooba. Clorox, a leader in home cleaning, and iRobot, the leader in commercial robots, began the collaboration about a year ago to create a cleaning solution that, when combined with Scooba, delivers a new level of cleanliness to floors.

“iRobot Scooba underscores our commitment to building robots that perform everyday tasks more effectively,” said iRobot Chief Executive Officer Colin Angle. “Scooba will liberate people from mops and buckets, and introduce a revolutionary way to clean floors.”

Scooba’s revolutionary cleaning process allows the robot to simultaneously vacuum, scrub and dry hard floors, all at the touch of a button. Unlike a conventional mop and bucket, the robot only uses fresh water and cleaning solution from a clean tank, so Scooba never spreads dirty water on the floor. Scooba cleans wet spills in addition to dirt and grime, and it is safe for use on all sealed hard floor surfaces, including wood and tile.

Space Bunny doesn’t often barge into my office to show me something on her laptop – usually, she’ll just shoot me an email – but she made an exception for this breaking news. Although a moment after she’d left the room, I did hear a cry of dismay, apparently upon her discovery that Scooba won’t be shipping until the end of this year.

I’ve made up my mind. There’s no reason the little beasties can’t be modded and made Internetable. It’s hacker time.