Splish, Splash, There's A Robot Cleaning My Pool

The strange splashing you may hear around swimming pools this summer could be caused by iRobot's latest product, the iRobot Verro Pool Cleaning Robot.

Drop the robot in the pool and immediately it begins to clean from the bottom to the waterline. Two models were unveiled Tuesday by iRobot via a business relationship with Acqua Products Group, which developed the automatic pool cleaners.

The $799 iRobot Verro 300 is for gunite and concrete pools. The robot power washes the pool with a hydro-jet system. The $1,199 iRobot Verro 600 has been designed for use with vinyl, tile, and fiberglass pools; its brushes scrub and clean as a vacuum and self-contained filtration system traps material.

iRobot said the cleaning robots improve the circulation of pool chemicals and water temperature while also cutting the run-time of pool filtration systems. The robot's vacuum and filtration system is designed to trap dirt, dust, algae, bacteria, and other particles as small as two microns.

The robots use artificial intelligence techniques to perform the cleaning functions, iRobot said. The robotics firm markets a line of robots ranging from household vacuum cleaners to military explosives detection devices.