iRobot, manufacturer of robotic vacuum cleaners Roomba, confirmed The Verge that a software update is causing problems for some users of its i7 and s9 robots and that it is working on another to avoid future problems. The footprint? It may be a while before things get resolved, with iRobot waiting for the update to be released “in the next few weeks”.
According to users of Reddit and Twitter, the recent firmware update 3.12.8 has caused navigation problems. One user described his cleaning robot as acting “drunk” after the update: spinning and bumping into furniture, cleaning in strange patterns, getting stuck in an empty area and not being able to go home on the pier. In addition, some other users are reporting that the room maps made by their Roombas have been deleted with the update.
The severity of the problems varies from Roombas now taking longer to clean the house to not being able to get back to the charging station and therefore hardly works. And while iRobot has worked with affected customers to roll back the update, some have reported that they are still having problems. They may have to wait until the new software update is released for the vacuum cleaners to work properly.
A Reddit user wasted his Roomba’s time with the update as he struggled and finally failed to return to his base station. The video shows the behavior described by many other posters on Roomba Reddit and on twitter also. A poster detailed his support experience, saying he waited two and a half weeks for the software update to roll back on his Roomba, and it hadn’t happened yet.