Robo flop: Bots better at hazardous duty than humdrum tasks

When it became too dangerous for humans to work inside the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, Tokyo Electric Power sent in four robots. Made by iRobot, the same company that makes the Roomba vacuum, the machines monitor radiation and oxygen levels. Robots are well-suited for jobs that are "dull, dirty and dangerous," P.W. Singer, author of "Wired for War," told the Wall Street Journal. Our tests of robotic household devices say otherwise.

After thousands of deployments searching caves in Afghanistan and scouting for improvised explosive devices in Iraq, it's clear that iRobot's military robots are well-equipped for dangerous missions. But the performance of robots on dull and dirty household chores such as mowing the lawn or vacuuming the floor has been less heroic. Here's what we discovered.

Vacuums. When we tested iRobot's Roomba 560, it was among the worst performing vacuums at cleaning edges and corners and sometimes ventured beyond its electronic borders. It also had a tendency to trap itself under beds and furniture or inside a room by bumping into a door and closing it.

Lawn mowers. We tested Friendly Robotics' RoboMower RL1000, LawnBott's LB3200 Evolution and the Husqvarna Automower 220 AC. They all cost more than $2,000 at the time of testing and none mowed lawns with the consistency of a lawn tractor or walk-behind mower. In fact, we judged the LawnBott "Not Acceptable" because it lacked a safety feature that instantly stopped the blade from spinning when the mower was lifted off the ground.

Gutter cleaner. The battery-operated Looj, also made by iRobot, uses rotating rubber paddles and brushes to clean gutters. But in our tests, it flipped many leaves back into the gutter or toward the roof instead of the yard. It also sometimes got stuck, and we dislodged dense leaves or debris only by working it back and forth repeatedly. The Looj did remove dry leaves from 60 feet of gutter in 15 minutes, but it took almost an hour to clear heavy spring debris from 50 feet.

While robots still can't match the dexterity of humans, there's no denying their grip on popular imagination. iRobot, the company, predates I, Robot, the Will Smith movie, by 14 years. Both pay homage to the I, Robot collection of short stories by Isaac Asimov, which also spawned two episodes of the Outer Limits starring Leonard Nimoy.

Given iRobot's new assignment in Japan, the closing narration of the Outer Limits episode seems especially apt: "Out of every disaster, a little progress is made. Man will build more robots, and learn how to make them better. And, given enough time, he may learn how to do the same for himself."

Reporting by Gian Trotta