Hi, does anyone collect this? And, has Electrolux done away with it? I thought about getting one, but never did. I love the namesake, but it is very expensive, at least it was.
The Trilobite came out around the same time the iRobot Roomba did, and was quite expensive in comparison. That said, it was a much more complicated autonomous system - rather than the Roomba's run-into-walls-until-i-can't-and-then-zip-around-haphazardly algorithm, the Trilobite used sonar to map out the where all the walls are, and clean the room accordingly.
IIRC, the Trilobite would actually clean most of the room at once, while the Roomba would need several runs to manage to grab the entire thing.
Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, Electrolux has discontinued it. When it costs a good amount more than your competitors, and still cleans about as well (there's only so much suction you can squeeze out of something the size of a stack of dinner plates), it's not likely to manage to thrive in the market.
I'd like to have one at one point, but one of my favorite things about the Roomba is the RS232 interface and the published spec, which allows you to muck around with all of the components in the Roomba (read sensors directly, play songs, drive it around wherever you please, and override it's "brain"). I don't think the Trilobite has that.
The link below is a YouTube video comparing the two. It's got some shortcomings - in particular, the placement of the Home Base in the first test with the Roomba screws it up and it keeps docking - but it does illustrate the differences in the vacuuming algorithm between the two.