Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After having 3 home-improvement gutter-dudes flake out (not show up) - I was happy to explore the potential to pass another mundane task to our future robotic overlords. The iRobot Looj 440 has a ton of potential but some serious flaws that keep it from being anymore more than a novelty. I bought the Looj with a particularly troublesome span of gutters on my house in mind. The majority of my gutters can be easily accessed with a common ladder and it is easy enough to get them with a pressure washer and gloves, scooping out debris. One span of the gutters is at a 3rd level height, which I can access from a sub roof and not-so-dangerous ladder climb. The hope was to deploy to the Looj at the point of the roof where I can access and let it work itself down the span, avoiding the need for an extension ladder. After charging the Looj overnight (which seems overkill for a lithium battery but is explicitly requested by the instructions) I started the Looj off on a simple span of gutter over my garage. It was last cleaned 3 months ago, still passed water but had a light debris of pine straw and some leaves. The Looj traveled about 2.5 feet until the pine straw was wound around the auger / paddle area and it seemed to be struggling. I drove it manually back to me and cleared the pine straw and sent it back to work. This process repeated for 45-minutes to an hour - for a 20ft gutter span. (The same gutter span could have been cleaned in 15 minutes with the pressure washer and two movements of the ladder). I then took the Looj (after a charge) to our back porch. These gutters included a light dusting of dirt on the bottom and some clumps of dry leaves. It took the Looj (and me fiddling with the remote like driving an RC car) about 30 minutes per 10 ft span. It was eventually able to clean these spans but it seemed to get hung-up easily. "Hung up" is an important note. The Looj has an LED indicator on the side of the unit and on the remote that blinks when it encounters resistence. If you try to power through the resistance for too long, the unit will shut itself down, ostensibly to prevent damage to its internal drive mechanism. I understand the need for the feature but the implementation is poor. It should be a 10-20 second lock out, not a full-shut down. After this round, I was a little annoyed that the project wasn't actually saving me any time but the hope was that the Looj could save the day on this tall span of gutter and prevent the need for a costly and dangerous ladder excursion. I charged the Looj one more time, climbed to the subroof and sent the Looj about it's task, trying the automatic "clean" button. It traversed over the span of previously cleaned gutter and as it encountered a glob of wet leaves and grime, it jammed up against the glob and started trying to kick out the debris. The light starts to blink to let me know that everything is not okay, so I take over manual control and back away from the debris. I then commend to a pattern of wait... advance... back off.. wait.. advance.. back off - trying to dislodge a small patch of wet leaves. It makes about an inch of progress each cycle and after about 15 minutes, locks me out and shuts down. Not only did I have to buy the expensive extension ladder and commit to the excursion to clean my gutters, I had to rescue the damned "robot", too. The debris that it was hung up was a pitiful single handful of damp leaves, not an adobe brick of doom, as it seemed to behave. It was at this point that I completed the job with the ladder and a pressure washer in about 1/2 the time it would have taken with the Looj. The looj could be awesome and I would imagine that with progress, it will be. My suggestions: The auto-shutdown thing needs to be reworked and not shut the whole unit down but to momentarily rest. The auto-clean mode is useless but they needed this mode to claim that this R/C toy is a robot. The auger shaft bristles should be reworked to prevent pine needles from wrapping around the shaft. The entire unit would benefit from more heft (weight) More auger paddle sizes (than the two included), faster auger RPMs Distinct motors to drive the Auger PTO and the Drive system, enabling a mode where the Auger can turn but the tracks do not drive the unit forward, so you can park on the edge of a clump and slowly easy into it. I love the idea of consumer robots like this. It could literally save lives /injury and at a minimum could provide a useful service. This idea is so good that I hope iRobot keeps trying and gets it right in a version or two. Until then, maybe I'll make an attachment for a drone to do this for me...