Future Trends

Stair-Climbing Vacuum Robot,

Limbo

Housework Robot,

Assistant Robot

The Assistant Robot (AR) is a housework robot developed by the Robotic Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. It has a three-dimensional sensor that allow it to detect its environment, places to clean, as well as navigating around. The AR is built to be able to carry dishes on a tray, pick up clothings and power up the washing machine, as well as sweeping and mopping the floor.

However, it towers at a 1.5m height and weigh 285 pounds, which made it large and bulky. Researchers stated that it would be few decades before such robot could be mass produced and sold in the market.

The Limbo is a robot developed in 2013 by Elliot Cohen. It is designed to navigate over doorsteps and climb stairs, an improvement to the current robot vacuums that can only avoid steps to prevent a tumble. The Limbo has four flexible wheels that are designed such that they could extend and compact, allowing it to climb up the stairs. This also allowed it to clean the floor and carpets much faster.

However, the Limbo is only a prototype and is not produced or sold yet.

The RoboMow is a robot that can mow the lawns of different sizes, ranging from small RoboMows for lawns of 300 square meters, to a large RoboMow that can mow lawns of 3000 square meters. While lawn mowing may not be very useful for most home dwellers in Singapore, the RoboMow is useful for people living in houses with gardens and yards, and especially most households in other countries.

A further look at robot cleaners of the future could include both the interior housework to exterior cleaning.

Ecovac's Winbot is available in the market and effectively used to clean windows. When placed on the window, glass or mirror, the Winbot has a strong suction that allows it to stay on the surface without falling. Working in a similar way to most robot vacuum cleaners, Winbot first gauge the size of the window, and start navigating around to clean the windows. One downside of the Winbot is that it requires the manual sticking and releasing of the robot from the window, and that it has a wire attached to it.

However, with the Winbot, we are looking at a possible future where robot cleaners would be able to navigate from the floor to the windows, and therefore a multi-tasking robot cleaner.

Lawn Mowing Robot, RoboMow

Window Cleaning Robot,

Winbot

For decades, scientists have been trying to invent a robot that can complete the houseworks for us, and have nursing care for the aging population. While that is not impossble, with robots such as the Assistant Robot and Twenty-One being developed by Japan, it would be too huge a jump for a robot vacuum cleaner like Roomba. Here, we will be discussing the small evolutions that could be developed for a robot vacuum cleaner before it can evolve into a housework robot. These few robots show that there is a huge potential for the ideal housework robot to be developed.