When I saw an advertisement for the Irobot Roomba in a magazine, I admit I thought it was a joke. A robotic vacuum cleaner that cleans your floors while you are away from home? The stuff of dreams (or perhaps for those with millions to spend on a whim). So I was surprised when I checked this out and discovered that Irobot have sold over 1.5 million of these worldwide.

Even more shocking was the price tag: currently around £195 in the UK (and far cheaper than this in the United States).

Not that I'll be trusting the cleaning of my own house to a robot though! My kids make far too much mess for such a small device to effectively clean this house!