Playing with a Roomba

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

While I was cat sitting I spent time playing with a Roomba. Most people set the roomba, and let it clean. I don’t. I watch it and I observe how it works, how it goes from place to place and how it navigates, and gets trapped, and procrastinates in one corner or part of an apartment/studio. Roombas are glamourised but I think they are flawed.

Their flaw is that they start from their dock, back and go beep beep beep beep, then they rotate and they start cleaning. So far so good. The issue comes when they hit an object. They start from the top right of a room and they go diagonally to the other side of the room and they hit an object and they turn right.

How they turn right changes. Sometimes they turn right and start circling clockwise, and then counterclockwise. Other times they hit an object and go they go across to the other side of the room. Their programming sees them pass by the same corner dozens of times whilst ignoring other parts of the room.

Form and function from Objectified by Gary Hustwit

I tried using shoes and other objects to control how big an area they focus on. I tried a bathroom, a small kitchen and a living room. In each case they go over and over the same spot.

I think Roomba should have been programmed to do a search pattern instead. When you’re mowing the lawn as a pattern you start from one side of the garden and you go back and forth, turning 180 degrees when you get to the other side and do a line right next to where you’ve been. In so doing you cut the grass in a short amount of time.

If Roomba simplified the programming they would be more efficient. They would not need to learn the room, they would not need to be “smart”. They could clean a room of any size within minutes rather than tens of minutes.

The video above shows that smart vacuum cleaners take an artistic and inefficient approach to cleaning. They waste a lot of energy going over parts of the room they have already cleaned whilst missing some spots.

The brush at the front also has a habit of flinging dust and larger forms of dirt away from themselves and into a part that was just cleaned. As a result, they may spread some dirt. There should be a way of preventing this.

Due to their programming flaw, Roombas are more fun to play and experiment with than use as a replacement to manually vacuuming a room. A simple tweak in their software would make them more efficient. At the moment they behave like toddlers with a vacuum cleaner rather than teenagers with a lawnmower.

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The Old Habit of Walking In The Rain
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The Old Habit of Walking In The Rain

Byrichard

A Walk In The Rain


Today it was meant to rain for the entire day but there was a brief window which it stopped raining so I went for a walk. I expected not to be rained on but within minutes I could feel a small spray of water falling on me. I walked anyway. It was nothing to worry about. I did the usual walk and although groups of people were walking they were easy to avoid. The rivers are nice and full today so rain is having an effect. Rain has melted the snow that had covered the landscape and filled the rivers. In some places there are traces that the water is slightly polluted.


Reading and Projets


I am listening to The Age of Wood as I walk. I am struggling to get into it. I did read about the Chemin De La Mature and that does sound like an interesting place to visit. It is a path cut through the rock. They didn’t cut through the rock from top to bottom though. They cut through it horizontaly. It looks like an interesting experience to walk along that path. In some images it looks narrow, but in others it looks comfortable to walk along. I need to find more information about the GR-10 walking route, to see whether it would be interesting to see the larger context.


Tracking, Without Charging


I tracked the walk the usual way, with a gps watch, but I also tracked it with the Core-S4 and so far the results are good. I have tracked two walks over two days, without charging between the two walks and the phone is still fine. I don’t need to charge it every day. I like this. I like that I have a watch that I charge once a week or less, and a phone that I don’t need to charge every evening. This means that I could travel away for a weekend carrying less weight. I could go without chargers for the first time in years.


We will see what I play with tomorrow.

Learning to Slow Down with Electric Cars

Learning to Slow Down with Electric Cars

Byrichard

One of the weaknesses of Electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. One of the advantages of electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. For some people this is a deal breaker. They don’t want to be forced to wait from two to 12 hours for their car to charge. I think that this could be a strength of electric cars.

Taking a Break

When you drive a conventional car you go to see people for an hour or two, and then you get in the car and you drive home. With an electric car you don’t behave like this. You drive somewhere that has a plug. You plug in the car and then you sit down, write a blog post, and then you go and see people. You even go for a walk with this people, have lunch, and more.

With a petrol car you go to see people and you can leave whenever you want. With the electric car you need to slow down. You need to give the car time to recharge from an ordinary wall socket. Plenty of buildings do not have the capacity to fast charge cars, so that’s where learning to slow down comes in to play.

Driving Speed

Yesterday I drove home at rush hour and I welcomed that traffic was slow. In a petrol car I would be frustrated and impatient to get from A to B but in an electric car I am not. The reason is simple. If you accelerate fast you waste energy. If you drive fast you burn more energy. If you drive at traffic jam speeds you use less energy for your trip. Instead of using 10 or more percent for a set journey you use seven to eight percent. When 10 percent equates to two hours of waiting for the car to charge, it pays to drive more conservatively.

If you drive at rush hour you can drive more conservatively, without annoying other road users.

The Jubilee Line Experience

When you take Jubilee line trains, or electric buses you hear the sound of the motors as they accelerate, or regenerate power as they slow down. It is a fun sound. You get a tamer version of this with electric cars. I find it fun.

And Finally

If I was driving to the shops and back I would be using one percent or less per trip. To recharge the battery after such trips would take a few minutes, rather than a few hours. Electric cars encourage short trips as charge times are lower but they also encourage longer drives to be for longer periods of time. In so doing electric cars encourage us to take the time to experience the places we drive to.

Fourty Five Days with the Cloudneo
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Fourty Five Days with the Cloudneo

Byrichard

Intro


On Cloudneo are shoes that you rent, rather than own. They are designed for running but you can also use them for walking. They are designed for dry, warm weather, rather than wet. They are designed to last from three months to six months depending on how quickly you wear them out. They are brilliantly white when new, but within two or three runs they lose their luminescence.


Circular – Use – Reuse


These shoes are designed to reduce the carbon footprint of the shoes we wear. They are made from beans, rather than petroleum based products. Once you’re done with a pair you send it back to the manufacturer, so that they are grounded back down and turned into a new pair of shoes. In theory you never own them. In practice they are just extremely easy to recycle.


Comfort When Running


I have run with them in heavy rain, sunny weather, through grass, mud and a river that was running down a road. I was so used to the trail glove 7 that I had to get used to normal shoes, and the difference in the feel and centre of gravity. I found that with these shoes my ankles rolled on uneven terrain. I attribute this to being used to barefoot shoes, rather than a design flaw.


With some running shoes I notice that I feel knee strain if I run too hard, or after a certain distance. I find that with these shoes my knees feel okay. I have run five or more kilometres several times.


Slippery when Wet


The shoes are designed for warm, dry weather so when you’re running in Switzerland, over slippery surfaces you will slip and show that you were a snowboarder or skier multiple times. They’re sub-optimal for rainy and muddy conditions. When it’s raining water will make its way through to your socks within seconds or minutes. The one advantage with these shoes is that they’re made from such minimal material that if they get wet they dry by themselves overnight, ready for the next day. Shoes that dry quickly don’t need to be waterproof because they dry fast.


Walking Comfort


Although they are not marketed or purposed as walking shoes I have used them on a variety of walks. They felt good until I tightened the laces. I could feel a pressure point where I had accidentally flipped the lace around. When I identified that this was the problem they were more comfortable to wear, once again. When I run up and down the stairs in this building they’re quieter than other shoes.


Mud Removal


Although the shoes are mediocre to bad in mud they are very easy to brush clean once you get home after a run or walk. This is important to me. In Autumn, Winter and Spring shoes can get very muddy. The lack of tread that makes them bad in the wet makes them great for cleaning. A few brush strokes and they’re clean, ready for walking indoors.


Cost


These shoes are designed to last for about 600 kilometres, as are most shoes, so if you run or walk a lot you will replace them sooner than every six months. After 45 days of use, but without a clear idea of distance, although at least 75 kilometres the only signs of wear are a slight loss of tread on the front of the shoe, and a discoloration on the rest of the shoe. Running in muddy and flooded conditions has that effect on shoes. If you walk and run 240 kilometres per month you will replace them within three months.


If you replace your shoes after three months they have cost you 105 CHF. If you replace them after six months they have cost 210 CHF. The more you walk and run in them, the sooner they need to be replaced, and the more rational they are to own.


Limitations


At the moment Cloudneo shoes are designed for running on asphalt, rather than mud or gravel. They’re good on dry surfaces but tend to slip on painted road surfaces and slick mud. If it’s raining your feet will get wet although despite running in 6°c temperatures my feet did not get cold.


Niche Use


I walk eight kilometres per day. This comes to 720 kilometres every three months. If I replace my shoes every three months then I go through four pairs of shoes per year. By using the Neocloud shoes for walking and running the shoes that I used for three months are recycled and reused for the same purpose.


And Finally


You have a month to see that the shoes fit. They prefer for you to test them for fit indoors, so that the shoes do not get dirty as this would result in them being recycled too early, rather than reused by someone without recycling. The minimum contract duration after the one month trial is six months which comes to 210 francs. If you use one pair per six months they cost that to own. If you replace them after three months this falls to 105 Francs.


It doesn’t bother me that shoes are not weatherproof but it does bother me that the sole doesn’t have grip on wet and muddy surfaces. Yesterday I slid several times walking out of the village. With other shoes I wouldn’t. They need to provide shoes that are good in wet and muddy conditions so that this becomes a year round solution, rather than in good road conditions.


These shoes are not worth 210 CHF, and at 105 CHF they’re still expensive compared to other options. I feel that this is a six month experiment, to experience high end running shoes but that when I can I will end the contract.

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Prison Architect Game Play videos fill a niche.

Byrichard

I sometimes envy people who produce gameplay videos because the barrier to entry is so low. In theory all you need is a microphone, a gaming PC or console, a capture card and the ability to talk without being asked questions. In essence you are providing an interior monologue whilst staring at a screen and playing a game. Prison Architect Game Play are an example of this trend.

The purpose of this game is to plan and then build a prison. You make sure that you stick within the budget, that the prison is clean and that you make enough money to survive and possibly even thrive. As you build one prison you can then sell it and keep the money to build a new prison.

Some game play videos are interesting because you discover a story at the same time as the person whom you are watching play the game. In other cases you watch people build parks or prisons and you get to live their experiences through the video. It brings us back to our youth when we watched our siblings play computer games. In this case though, the game player can have from two hundred thousand to four million people watch their videos.

On youtube these videos are monetised but I have not researched how much they make but view. I also noticed that if you watch these videos via Chromecast you do not see any of the adverts so I question how they monetise these videos when they are viewed on a television.

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503 is an interesting protest documentary.

Byrichard

Whenever I hear that people are protesting I discount this as bored people keeping themselves entertained but upon watching the film 503 I changed my mind. The documentary is about the protests that took place over a period of 503 days when Augusto Pinochet was kept under house arrest in England for his crimes against humanity.

When interviewed the protesters explained that these actions were their way of remembering all the disappeared people. It was through the actions, like the crosses outside parliament square and the 503 day protest outside Pinochet’s house in England that helped them feel better. Describing the moment that they heard Pinochet had been arrested you saw that these people were jubilant. 503 days later that jubilation was gone but the community of protesters had expressed their concerns to an international crowd, ready to listen to what they had to say.

The documentary is different from many other documentaries I have watched and I’d recommend watching that one simply to see how protesters are not stereotypical of those we see in newspaper cuttings and films.

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