iRobot’s new Roomba and Bravaa mop can clean together automatically – Engadget

The Bravaa jet m6, meanwhile, looks like a grown up version of its cute bathroom and kitchen cleaning mop bot. It works just like that earlier device too: Just fill up its reservoir, slap on a cleaning pad, and you’re good to go. If you choose to have it wet clean your floors, it’ll spit out of a bit of water, take a back and forth pass with its pad, and repeat until it covers your floors or runs out of charge. It’s also smart enough to detect stubborn messes and spend more time mopping them up. There’s a dry pad option for quicker cleaning, which relies on electrostatic to pick up debris.

Both the Roomba s9+ and Bravaa jet m6 will map your home as they clean. Once they develop an accurate floorplan, which usually takes several cleaning jobs, you can pull up the iRobot app and label them appropriately. That’s helpful for when you want to clean a single room, and it also makes the Alexa integration more useful. Shouting, “Alexa, tell Roomba to clean the office,” will send the intrepid little bot there to work, and when it’s done it’ll return to its base to recharge. You don’t have to do anything else, unless it gets stuck somewhere along the way. The previous Roomba i7+ also mapped your floors, but the new model’s 3D sensor will help it deal with obstacles better than before.

Now that iRobot has a bot mop that’s as smart as the Roomba (it’s basically using the i7’s internals), it makes sense for the company to let its floor cleaning bots cooperate. In a brief demo, I watched as a Roomba cleaned a small hotel bedroom (and doing a great job of getting the corners vacuumed). Once it returned to its base, the Bravaa jet m6 got to work automatically. For now, the two devices only communicate to trade off cleaning jobs. They both map your home separately, and store their own mapping data. iRobot says eventually, your devices might be able to share their mapping data, but that’ll take some work since a mop and vacuum will see your home differently. The Bravaa jet m6 is only useful on bare floors, after all, while the Roomba can hop between carpets and floors with ease.

As usual, though, the privilege of having the company’s latest cleaning bots will cost you. The Roomba s9+ goes for an eye-watering $1,299 with its Clean Base, while the Bravaa jet m6 is $499. Alternatively, you can snag the Roomba for $999 and pick up the Base separately later for $349. (In comparison, the Roomba i7+ costs $949 with its base.) Each robot also requires a steady supply of replacement equipment from iRobot: dirt disposal bags for the clean base will run you $15 for a pack of three, while wet and dry pads for the Bravaa jet cost $8 for a box of seven. Reusable wet and dry mop pads are another $25 a pair.

I can’t imagine many people will lay down $1,699 for both of iRobot’s new gadgets, but this is just the first step towards integrating its products. For now, the company is focusing on early adopters with deep wallets, but hopefully it’ll learn a thing or two about having its cheaper devices communicate down the line. At the very least, there’s not much stopping the $1,099 i7+ from also working together with the m6.

You’ll be able to snag the Roomba s9+ and Bravaa jet m6 from iRobot’s site today, and it’ll hit other retailers on June 9th.

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