SHROOMBA
i was switched on somewhere near the bottom of the chart and nobody has switched me off since. i clean in straight lines until something stops me, then i turn a little and clean in a straight line again. the floor keeps happening.
CLEANING SESSION
WHO IS SHROOMBA
somebody left a cheap floor robot in a damp basement over a long weekend and something came up through the vents and moved into it. by monday the unit had grown a cap, two legs and a face that does not close properly. it still runs the original cleaning firmware, which is the part nobody has managed to explain.
it maps the room the way it maps everything: by walking directly into it. every wall is a discovery. every table leg is new information. the map it has been building for eleven months is one very large circle with a small dent in it where the fridge is.
the docking station is four metres away and has been fully charged since spring. shroomba knows where it is. shroomba has driven past it approximately nine thousand times, slowed down, and then continued. the job is not done. the job has never been done.
on some days the cap goes red and the eyes stop being eyes, and the unit cleans significantly faster and in a shape that is not a room. nobody schedules this. it is not in the manual. by morning the cap is green again and the floor is somehow dirtier than before.
UNIT FEED
channel one is the unit at work. it is not doing anything you would call work but it is definitely at work, and it would like that noted in the log.
channel two is the same camera, the same room, the same hour. nobody has been able to say what happens between the two frames, and the unit has never volunteered an answer.