Glowing Roomba Timelapse Creates Spectacular Cleaning Montage

There is something undeniably satisfying about watching a cute, creature-like Roomba vacuum cleaner zooming about a room as if it were the child of Rosie from The Jetsons. Though Gavin Heffernan of Sunchaser Pictures is known for his grand time lapses of natural environments—like the star-splashed skies above Joshua Tree and Toronto during an ice storm—he got interested by the patterned sequences of his little machine’s cleaning path, and subsequently suped-up his Roomba with different lights to make a new time lapse film, ROOMBACALYPSE. The result is a psychedelic clip including a variation of mirroring effects that yield symmetrical designs. Cleaning has never looked so… pretty. 

According to Heffernan, the lighting effects were achieved using a camping head lamp and a flashing rescue beacon, and the pool balls were actually glow-in-the-dark golf balls. Even though Roombas don’t make a room look spiffy until their job is done, Heffernan’s time lapse makes the whole tidying rigmarole a eye-catching montage. Now if only Roombas could really clean those sticky messes like they’re supposed to. 

See more of Gavin Heffernan and Sunchaser Pictures’ work here!

@zachsokol