Can we make a Rumba vacuum cleaner to hunt cockroaches?

Not really.
They live inside walls and other places the robot can not reach, so at best you could make one that goes for targets of opportunity.
And then you need to make sure that they are immediately killed, otherwise the inside of the robot will become a roach nest.

Cockroaches are WAY faster than any automatic vacuum cleaner. You would need a vacuum like some of these radio controlled toys they have, four wheel drive and faster than hell. They’d be banging into your furniture and walls all night. Could you live with that??

@kritiper Ok. What about a laser armed artificial intelligent drone? That might get messy.

It would set the house on fire. Best to just burn the house down without spending the extra money on the drone.

@kritiper What if one got a cat? Cats would catch the bugs and mice too.

When we lived in the ghetto area of our university town we had a dog that was part pointer. She started out her pointing career pointing…you guessed it! Cockroaches! She also love to bring over the trashcan and going through it anytime we left the house. She was a true garbage hound!

Cockroaches have reflexes far superior to anything as bulky and slow paced as a robovac. Any vacuum agile enough to deal with roaches would be extremely hazardous to its owners.

I would love something that would kill roaches fast. I’ve been using an old fashioned fly swatter, and it does work every time, but would prefer not to go anywhere near those things. There’s something called a Bug A Salt, but it doesn’t seem to have much range.

Boric acid. You only need to spread it around once. Within a week your problems will vanish. Then your neighbor’s problems will vanish.

One thing Cockroaches are drawn to is the low hum or buzz of electronics—such as telephone chargers and microwaves. The best roach trap would sit quietly except for that low vibrating hum they love so much. It shouldn’t be hard to trap them once they’re there.

Yes! You could use a modification of something I put together to hunt a particularly large Gokiburi, Japanese cockroach that got into my house. I used a battery powered, air soft (6mm plastic BBs) MP5 machine gun that was triggered by a 0.5mW laser that I had adjusted to just above carpet height. The instant the beam was broken the machine gun fired. It worked but the results were disgusting.
I never stepped into the beam by mistake.

Design Tip: Make sure the Airsoft has a magazine that is spring fed rather than gravity fed. You need to place the gun on its side as close to the beam as possible. The gravity fed ones won’t feed correctly.
i just checked, The one I used was purchased over 20 years ago I don’t see it for sale any more. I’m sure there are others that will work.

Only you, @ LucyGuy! Ha ha!

GQ, RDG.

@Patty_Melt Thanks. That roach left a trail of poop dots behind as it strolled through the house unimpeded while I was out at work. When I saw the trail go under my bed one morning I decided desperate measures were needed. To be honest, I had fun doing it. ;-)

You can chop off their heads & they will continue on with their life for a minimum of 2 weeks before finally dying. Boric acid will kill them, but it will also kill your dog, cat, & children!!! There is a paste that comes in a somewhat generic tube that works well. You spread it along the cracks in the room, they eat it, go back to their nest & die. Their nest mates will eat them in order to get rid of the trash & they will also die upon ingesting the corpse.

Truth be told, we could be hit by an atom bomb today, all humans die, & the roaches will still be wandering around cleaning up the aftermath. Then in 1,000 years they will be the ONLY living thing on the face of the earth!!!

@RedDeerGuy1 A cat would be a better choice than a vacuum cleaner with laser. And this would answer your question.

@LadyMarissa So you chop off their heads and they go on living…Do they keep eating, too???

I have a plethora, of skinks, Italian geckos, and other lizards, that are far better than a rumba…

@RedDeerGuy1 “What about a laser armed artificial intelligent drone?”

There’s a mosquito laser, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

@kritiper A cat won’t chase nor kill a roach…they’re too finicky for that!!!

To answer your question…A cockroach can live a week (or) up to a month ( only if conditions are cold ) without its head. The roach only dies because without a mouth, it can’t drink water and dies of thirst. They are NOT human, so they do NOT need all the requirements we need!!! For better info read here.

Get a genetically altered cat and train it.

As a child, I had plenty of farm cats that loved chasing grasshoppers and crickets.
Funny to watch.

Oh man…. I’ve given this waaay too much thought.
If this problem were placed on my desk i’d start with the basic Roomba with location and room memory and add a camera and the feed mechanism, motor, power piston and barrel from the device I mentioned above.
I would use the camera to take frames at 20 to 50 Hz and use a small image processor to subtract the previous frames from the current frame and stack the images with some open source software like Registax. This would result in an image similar to how a frog sees – only changes show up. Registax would eliminate the big background movements so only something small and moving would be visible. The Roomba would rotate to move the target close to the center of the frame and fine tune it’s motion using a simple prediction model based upon the 2 or 3 previous frames.
Power to the motor would be engaged and the tunit would fire a 5 round burst at the piston cycling rate of about 10 Hz. If after 0.25 seconds motion was still detected a followup burst would be applied.
The unit would then move on to another location where it would sit and wait.

^ Way too much is an understatement. When will your prototype be completed

I need a man like that in my life.

@LuckyGuy Seems like the harder problem would be avoiding shooting things you don’t want shot.

@Zaku It would only shoot something that is moving AND is the predetermined size range of the target cockroach. I would not wiggle my big toe in front of it. ;-)