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It’s Alive! Researchers Find Roombas Have A Personality.

Alison Escalante MD
3 min readAug 15, 2020
Roombas do more than vacuum, they also delight us with personality. Photo: @jankolario on twitter/Unsplash

Have you ever suspected that your Roomba is alive? You are not alone. New research confirms that people can tell what kind of personality a robot vacuum has, just by the way it moves. Even better, people correctly guessed which of Snow White’s Seven Dwarves the robot was mimicking. And that’s the kind of delightful finding that makes me happy.

It’s nothing new for people to fall in love with their robot vacuum. There’s your coworker, who shares stories of the cute things their Roomba did last night. Or the beloved DJ Roomba episodes on Parks and Recreation. Even twitter is peppered with entertaining moments in human robot vacuum relationships.

All of those Roomba owners seem a little crazy, until you get your own. Suddenly you too are convinced that the little disc shaped robot who lives off dirt has a relationship with you. You are not imagining things; scientists agree with you.

Robot vacuum research

Robot vacuum research is nothing new, and neither is research into human robot relations…

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Alison Escalante MD
Alison Escalante MD

Written by Alison Escalante MD

Parenting Author of Sigh, See, Start | Forbes & Psych Today Contributor | Pediatrician | SighSeeStart.com

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