Share All sharing options for: This Roomba Screams Because Existence Is Pain And So Is Vacuuming

Chores suck. And as long as chores have existed, people have been inventing things that will do them for you. The dishwasher, the washing machine, the dryer, the rideable lawn mower — the list of inventions that exist because we all hate cleaning stuff is a long one. One of the most recent additions to this list is the robot vacuum, which rolls around your house sucking up anything in its path. It doesn’t have a visual sensor, so it changes direction when it bumps into things and has about the same maneuvering skills as a jellyfish. It’s... not the most elegant robot ever.

Running into walls and table legs all day has gotta be a frustrating way to go through life, but those little vacuums do it without complaint. Possibly because they’re just a bunch of troopers who love their job, mostly because they don’t have a way to communicate even if they wanted to.

Well, now they kind of do.

The latest great leap in science has lead to this innovation: a Roomba that screams.

YouTuber and builder of unnecessary (but amazing) robots Michael Reeves modified a Roomba vacuum, adding voice recordings of screams, colorful strings of curse words, and phrases like “WHY WAS I CREATED THIS WAY” and “WHY WOULD YOU BUILD ME SO THAT MY SOLE EXISTENTIAL PURPOSE IS TO SUFFER FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT OF OTHERS” to its sensor.

Because a clean floor is good, but a clean floor and cries of agony and existential dread emanating from the robot slave that cleaned the floor is even better.

I built a Roomba that swears when it bumps into stuff pic.twitter.com/ZdbKWGszT8 — Michael Reeves (@michaelreeves) May 4, 2019

You can watch the full video here