Photos: Robot vacuums and rolling laptops
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Look out, Roomba. Evolution Robotics is looking to muscle in onrnyour turf (er, carpet?). The Pasadena, Calif., company has a navigationrnsystem called NorthStar that’s used in a robotic vacuum cleaner forrnspecialty retailer The Sharper Image, among other gear; now it says itrnhas a deal with a major appliance maker to develop a vacuum-bot set tornsweep into living rooms in early 2008. Seen here is Sharper Image’s $99rnEvac. NorthStar projects lights onto a ceiling or other surface so thatrna detector on the robot can triangulate to find its location.
This is what Evolution calls the
Seoul-based Yujin Robotics is using Evolution’s NorthStarrnnavigation system in a prototype household robot called Jupiter, in arnproject organized by the Korean Ministry of Information andrnCommunication. The ministry’s Ubiquitous Robot Companion conceptrninvolves robots linked by a broadband connection to a server, in orderrnto minimize a robot’s onboard functions and thus its cost.
