Photos: Robot vacuums and rolling laptops

By Bill Detwiler October 20, 2006, 3:21 AM PDT billdetwiler

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Northstar — Photos: Robot vacuums and rolling laptops

The Sharper Image

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.

The Sharper Image

Photos: Robot vacuums and rolling laptops

This is what Evolution calls the standard edition of its ER1 robot, with an attached gripper for grabbing and carryingrnobjects. The ER1 is a do-it-yourself high-tech contraption withrnprogrammable software and what the company promises is easy-to-assemblernhardware.

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.

By Bill Detwiler

Bill Detwiler is the Editor for Technical Content and Ecosystem at Celonis. He is the former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic and previous host of TechRepublic's Dynamic Developer podcast and Cracking Open, CNET and TechRepublic's popular online show.

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