Household Robotics Report

By Ben Kaufman, Max de Arriz, and others

House hold robots a large topic, whether its to help a disabled person such as MySpoon which helps person that can not move his/her limbs eat, to RoBoMower that give you some free time by mowing your lawn for you. Robots can be very helpful in many ways.

Cleaning the floors is the main topic of this report.

(We never found the time to finish this report, but it was interesting to work on it and see where the technology was going.)

Current State

House hold robots can perform endless task, however at the moment most house hold robot are very limited, most robot that maintain your house cant not travel far do to complex house designs, such as a staircase leading to a different floor, or a transition piece between a wooden floor and a marble floor. A bigger problem could be a shorter battier time on different surfaces, some robot compensate for this by returning to their recharging station. Another problem is robot reliability, some robot such as the Roomba can't complete their tasks, due to the Roomba's rounded shape, it can't get in to corners.

Robot safety standards, can't harm pet children... idea's on how to achieve this, maybe some kind of plastic dome or a auto shutoff such as when a robot turn over or get flipped the blades or what ever lock in place. Keep it away form young hands and do not tamper with it.

Future Direction

These types of robots will get better at cleaning all kinds of floors.

Challenge

Cleaning the corners.

Cleaning up liquids and drinks on the floor.

My Ideas

Picking up the clothes in my room.