iRobot Looj will clean your gutters

The company that dispatches robots to clean your floors now wants to scour America's gutters.

Next up from iRobot is a gutter-cleaning machine, according to recently filed photos, diagrams and documents that were discovered by Engadget on an FCC Web site.

The new robot is called the Looj, according to a confidentiality request filed on August 28, which seems to have been granted on August 29.

All the photos and diagrams on the Federal Communications Commission site have been made confidential until October 13, but not before Engadget was able to snag one diagram and one photo of the Looj.

Burlington, Mass.-based iRobot was not immediately available for comment, but CEO Colin Angle did say in a recent interview that consumers could expect to see two new robots at the Digital Life, which will take place in New York at the end of September.

Guess we know now that one of them is the gutter-cleaning Looj.

[thedreaming]

This is how lazy we are...

We actually develop robots that clean gutters and floors! We could be making robots that save lives by doing dangerous stuff by putting out fires or fighting wars or disarming a minefield but Noooooooooooooo, we have to make a robot that cleans a gutter cause we're so lazy that cleaning is beneath us.

[Tom_E]

You don't think cleaning gutters is dangerous?

Spoken like someone who

(a) has never leaned a little bit too far on a high ladder resting on a sloping lawn to try to reach that last bunch of wet leaves in the corner

and/or

(b) is too young to consider that there might be a time when you don't feel safe on a ladder but aren't quite ready to move to The Home just yet

Also, FYI, iRobot does make military robots that are saving some lives that Bush would otherwise be throwing away. (But that's another rant)

[skrubol]

Where do you think this technology came from?

iRobot got its start in military SWAT and hazmat robots. Selling to the general public has massive income potential compared to selling to government agencies. These consumer robots have trickle-down technology from the big boys, but the future hazard robots will get trickle-up tech from the mass market robots (price reduction, maybe making their deployment more common for instance.) So in a very indirect way, these robots are helping save lives.

[this1!]

you're right but...

society has always been this lazy, its just now we are replacing the workforce of human services (maids, carpet cleaners, roofers) with robots. We were always this lazy, its just now we don't actually have to pay a service, just a 1 time cost to buy a machine to do it.