How do you design a Roomba vacuum for the stairs?

Context: 
Purpose: Cleaning, particularly removing dust from the surface of stairs
Goal: Profit

User:
Wealthy individuals, house-keeping staff of offices, societies, public places
Since the goal is profit, will focus on offices which makes cleaning staff at offices as the primary user.

Persona:
Name: Sam
Income: INR 10k/month (modest income)
City: Bengaluru
Fear: Job loss, inability to support his kid's education
Goal: Keeping the office clean (2nd and 3rd floor), furniture arranged, report any issues, spend more time with his family

Need:
User: (In priority Order)
1. Timely dusting
2. Reporting
3. Managing equipment
4. Monitor
5. Indicate wet surface

Customer (Company/Tech parks):
1. Keeping stairs clean 
2. Keeping costs low
3. Minimal interruption to business

Solution:
1.. Timely dusting (P0: Highest priority keeping customer and user goal in mind - clean at scheduled times)
a. app alarm and notification - time and location of dusting
b. manually operated rechargeable machine which could suck the dust particles
c. automatic cleaning at the required time by sensor based machine (preferred since it will remove cost of labor)

2. Reporting (P0: Important for compliance)
a. Report the time, location of cleaning to central station
b. Report any issues with equipment
c. Report any areas which could not be cleaned 

3. Managing equipment (P0: to keep cost low)
a. Indicate charge left
b. Notify when the machine needs to be serviced
c. self-service (preferred since helps in cost reduction but not in scope of MVP)

4. Monitor(P1)
a. regular app notification of the checks
b. scheduled checks of the surface
c. initiate cleaning if necessary

5. Indicate wet surface(P2)
a. inform to put a board
b. Florescent papers

Evaluation:
Since the goal of the customer is to reduce cost and that of the end user is to spend less time and energy in mundane monitoring/cleaning of floor, I propose a smart machine which regularly monitors, cleans the stairs when required and sends regular updates to the central station.

Risky assumptions which need to be validated:
1. Timely dusting required - What if people use lifts so only one dusting per day is enough. Not a big cost for businesses
2.  Labor costly - what if cost of labor is extremely cheap?
3. Electricity available always
4. Workforce is tech-savy
5. Office dirt can be handled by a machine (without the need of manual scrubbing) 

Research:
Consult an organisation - Provide your own labor to validate the above assumptions:

Implementation:
MVP: Remote controlled machine which cleans the stairs
V1: Automatic cleaning with a person monitoring
V2: Ability to schedule cleaning
V3: smart cleaning - regular monitor and clean when found dirt

Metrics:
1. no. of complaints/accidents on stairs
2. no. of cleaning rounds made by the machine
3. electricity used
4. no. of services per month

Clarification

What is a roomba vaccum? Roomba is a robotic vaccume that can roam on the floor and vaccum automatically without requiring a person to push. Once turned on, it will walk in the room until it has covered all areas and returns to the base station. Many people who own roomba ran into problems such as:

• Roomba gets stuck with obstacle

• Ran out of battery

• Cannot do stairs due to its round and flat shape

Who are we designing for

• Who are roomba users?

  • Young professional who are tech savvy but don’t have time to do housework

  • Parents with children who need to clearn carpet/floor frequently and use roomba to reduce their workload

  • Pet owners who need to clean pet hairs frequently

Young professionals are less likely to own a house, many live in apartment - out

Focus on parents with children

• parents  especially mom does a lot of housework. Need tools to save time

• More likely to own home with stairs in it

• Children run up and down a lot. Stairs are heavily used area that require cleaning

What are mom’s needs?

• Able to vaccum both stairs and flat service. Save money to buy specialized tools. Save storage space

• Can be turned on easily and left alone without having to watch over it

  • Move up and down on stairs without errors and requires intervention

• Long battery power without running out of battery in the middel of clearning

• Children proof for safety

• Can detect small objects and stop sweeping safely, so won’t swallow children’s toys and break the brush row

Solutions:

• Ability to turn on with one button push or remote control 

• Shape fits standard stair width and can vaccum left to right

  • Make a rectangle shaped with moving brushrolls from left to right or the opposit direction

  • Can extend the sides to fit the width of the stairs

• Can move down steps once one step is cleaned

  • Once finished one step, can push against the two sides and move down to the next

• Can move along a rail. 

  •  install rail along the stairs and the machine can attach to the rail for moving up and down, while left and right at each step for sweeping

• Can have mechanical arms to extend and sweep the stairs while the “mothership” stay on top or bottom of the stairs

  • Smaller brush row at the end of the arm. Dirt is sucked into “mothership”

• Have sensor to detect stair vs flat surface, avoid obstacles, detect small toys

  • Can prompt mom to tell whether it’s garbage to pick up or toy to avoid

  • Use camera and video notification to let Mom see what roomba sees

• Have multiple base stations for charging if battery capacity is an issue

  • Roomba can find the closest base station if battery is running low

• Rubber edges and corners to avoid running into furniture or toes and causing harm

  • Camera and sensor can detect infants so avoid running into them

• Parent lock, so that children can press the buttons on roomba but will not have any effect

Evaluation solutions

Railing vs step function

• Railing may be more stable, but will require installation. People may not like it for asethetic reasons, or don’t want to have anything permanent on their stairs, stuck with one brand, unless all robotic vaccum supports a standard railing system

• May be easier to implement, less mechanical challenges to solve

• Maybe railing can be made easy to put on/off and extend/shorten length

• Step function more flexible, can move from one stair to another, one house to another

• Mechanically more difficult to design to maneuver

• More risk at tripping over and fail to complete the task

Mothership with extanded arm

• No installaion

• Stable base, less likely to fall/roll down stairs

• Arm length is a limit

• Arm may be easy to break. Chilren may try to grab it

• Sucktion maybe an issue if arm is too far away from the mothership

• Mothership shape is more flexible and can maintain the round shape which has worked well

I would recommend mothership with extended arm

• Home stairs usually not that long

• Cost of building an extended arm that can maneuvor in predictable fashion is likely lower than a roomba that can walk the stairs or move along a rail.