What kind of personality does your Roomba have? None, I suppose. But what kind should it have? Researchers in the Netherlands from Delft University of Technology, Delft, and Philips Research, Eindhoven, gathered a focus group together to decide what kind traits your vacuum should have if the technology were available to give it a personality.
The actors' routines were rated and they were found to be good vacuum cleaners. If you want to be entertained, you only need to add a cat. Link
The busy Dutch team were asked to rate a notional future robot vacuum cleaner’s personality traits for desirability, and it was determined that the robot should be calm, friendly, like routines, but definitely not be talkative *. The next part of the study involved a group of human actors, who were asked to act like a robotic vacuum cleaner displaying the desired characteristics which had been determined in part one.
The actors' routines were rated and they were found to be good vacuum cleaners. If you want to be entertained, you only need to add a cat. Link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy