Roomba and Scooba Make Room for Dirt Dog

Fans of the Roomba and Scooba, those fetching robotic floor cleaners, take note. The folks at iRobot are banking you've become so dependent on your robotic cleaning helpers that you'll want one for the garage, porch, basement, and other rough surfaces that require some heavy-duty cleaning.

The Burlington, Mass. company this week unveiled the Dirt Dog Workshop Robot, a yellow, 13-diameter hard-scrubbing cousin of the Roomba vacuum and Scooba hard-floor cleaner. It's the same size and shape as the others, but its bagless bin is about 40 percent larger so it can take in nuts, bolts, wood chips, and other big pieces of debris.

It's got the same interface: Just push the "Clean" button and it rotates around the floor vacuuming on its own. When it's finished, it fits into the Roomba's self-charging Home Base, and is compatible with other Roomba accessories, such as the remote control and battery. But it operates more like a street sweeper than a vacuum, with two counter-rotating stiff brushes that spin fast to sweep debris into the bin.

The cost? At $130, it's less than the $150 to $330 price range for Roomba models, which come with more accessories.

If this baby could put away all the stuff scattered on the garage floor along the way, I'd be in. If anyone picks one up for some fall cleaning, let us know what you think.