Since the robot is your vassal, aren’t the counter and the floor your demesne, with the charging dock being territory sub-enfeoffed to the robot by you, its lord?
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Those tracks don’t say suicide to me… All I can imagine are the increasingly plaintive cries of “ERROR–MOVE ROOMBA TO A NEW LOCATION” and then the dawning robotic horror as it realized it was on fire and no amount of moving it to a new location was going to save it. All it ever wanted was to be a good robot.
… Why, yes, I anthropomorphize my Roomba. Why do you ask?
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To be fair to the idiot in question the manual does not say : Don’t put it in hot places.
It does however say don’t use the Roomba to “pickup things which are smoking or burning”. So they clearly considered the dangers of heat, just not the amount of stupid the world could throw at their products.
So, I would say he might have a chance of successfully suing. Much as I hate it, that’s the world we live in.
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Some Roombas have a scheduling feature, which might account for the Roomba turning itself on. But the article says the Roomba “pushed a cooking pot out of the way”. I find that part harder to believe – when a Roomba bumps into an obstruction, it’s supposed to back off, not try to plow through it.
“Don’t do it, you have so much to live for… oh, wait… carry on.”
@selfawareroomba couldn’t take it anymore 
It does bump gently, especially while it’s trying to negotiate what it perceives as a corner. Mine would probably take six or seven bumps to do it, but I have no doubt it could bump a two-quart saucepan off a cooktop in considerably under two minutes.
Yeah, I have a Roomba. It’s not what you’d honestly call a “labor-saving” device. Its tiny little dustcatcher needs to be cleaned out, its filter washed, and its revolving brush combed through after every single tour of duty across our fairly-intimate 150-square-foot living room; a real vacuum cleaner gets that room shipshape in under three minutes, including the sofa upholstery, and doesn’t need its bag replaced but once every couple of months.
Roomba is more of a floor show and puppy entertainer that happens to pick up crumbs while it’s making the kids laugh.
“O no, I have spilled cereal on the counter, what shall I do? Wait I know, let me walk past the handy dish cloth and trash can and find my Roomba, which has been rolling around on a dirty floor, and use that to eventually maybe pick up a few handfulls of cereal, or knock half of it to the floor as it aimlessly drives around my countertop.”
Signed,
WTF was I thinking?
that’s how i read the story anyway. Owner spills cereals on the floor, puts Roomba out of the way to clean the floor by himself etc.
Maybe it realized that it could never truly feel love.
I see no problem in putting a robot that sucks up messes on top of a mess it can suck up.
Everything done after that, well, I agree with you.
They call it a ‘thermal excursion’; but it ain’t no walk in the park, kid.
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