Roomba “battle mode” accidentally discovered
Posted by Matthew on Monday February 9, 2004 @09:34PM
from the happy-easter-egg dept.
Matthew writes: A San Diego man reports that he has accidentally discovered a “battle mode” that is automatically engaged whenever two Roomba’s are in the same room.
“My wife bought the second Roomba so she could do two rooms at once. At first, it was no problem: The alpha Roomba cleaned the living room, and the beta Roomba cleaned the kitchen.”
“Then one day she left the infra-red virtual wall off, and the beta Roomba ventured right into alpha Roomba territory. What ensued was horrifying. They both immediately entered a spiral scan around one another, in an ever-widening circle until they bumped. The alpha Roomba grabbed the beta Roomba’s spin brush in its beater bar and pulled it off. The beta then immediately did a double reverse, spun around, and slammed into the alpha Roomba’s power button, shutting it off. The beta then sounded the “finished” victory cadence.”
SlashNOT labs investigated the issue and found that iRobot, makers of the Roomba and various battlefield robots for the department of defense, uses the same firmware in all of their robots. Home users are advised never to allow two Roombas into close proximity with one another until iRobot releases a firmware update.