Photos: Robot vacuums and rolling laptops

Look out, Roomba. Evolution Robotics is looking to muscle in on\r\nyour turf (er, carpet?). The Pasadena, Calif., company has a navigation\r\nsystem called NorthStar that’s used in a robotic vacuum cleaner for\r\nspecialty retailer The Sharper Image, among other gear; now it says it\r\nhas a deal with a major appliance maker to develop a vacuum-bot set to\r\nsweep into living rooms in early 2008. Seen here is Sharper Image’s $99\r\nEvac. NorthStar projects lights onto a ceiling or other surface so that\r\na detector on the robot can triangulate to find its location.

This is what Evolution calls the standard edition of its ER1 robot, with an attached gripper for grabbing and carrying\r\nobjects. The ER1 is a do-it-yourself high-tech contraption with\r\nprogrammable software and what the company promises is easy-to-assemble\r\nhardware.

Seoul-based Yujin Robotics is using Evolution’s NorthStar\r\nnavigation system in a prototype household robot called Jupiter, in a\r\nproject organized by the Korean Ministry of Information and\r\nCommunication. The ministry’s Ubiquitous Robot Companion concept\r\ninvolves robots linked by a broadband connection to a server, in order\r\nto minimize a robot’s onboard functions and thus its cost.