Honestly, I’m too tired to clean my house. I used to feel proud to be the smallest, whitest house in the house. Here it always smelled like Fabulous. But then I had a son, and it all came out the window as I recovered the little time I have for myself and my hobby of building mechanical keyboards.
That is the reason I’m pretty sure I am the goal demographic for a Dyson robot vacuum cleaner which can go up steps. Bloomberg reports that the vacuum has passed 16 years developing a robot vac this can clean and climb stairs at once. The details, revealed in patents published this week abroad, shows that the Dyson bot can hold cups and open drawers. The only thing that is not clear is whether this project is still in the planning phase or if it is just an idea presented for later.
Dyson often works on projects outside of his usual scope. From shovel ssleepers a toothbrushes, the company seems anxious to take charge of his house. But of course, it has not yet been confirmed that the climbing robot is a real product.
“We file a lot of patents,” a Dyson spokesman told Bloomberg. “But we never comment on technologies we may or may not launch in the future.”
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From the look of the patent filed in the UK, the vacuum of the Dyson robot would not be a terrifying-looking anthropomorphic-type robot. Instead, the diagrams make it look like one of those old-school vacuum cleaners with extendable foot and arm wheels. As described in filing of patents (PDF link):
Track-laying climbing mechanisms are installed on both sides of a main frame and an attached frame. A bottom plate is installed below the middle of the main frame and a baffle is installed at the rear end of the bottom plate in articulated mode. As the robot goes up or down, the robot and the stair climbing device meet and the baffle goes down to the ground. The robot climbs up the bottom plate through the baffle, and then the baffle rotates up and stands up to lock the robot. After going up or down, the baffle is lowered to the ground and the robot is dragged by the baffle to the ground.
I’m usually not one to defend a future robot without a head skepticism. But at the same time, I want a gap that goes up the stairs. There are additional details about the nature of “grabbing” the arms of the void and the patent seems to suggest that it exists primarily to “control orientation”. But given that he’s supposed to be able to grab a cup, I’d like to see him pull away from a dining chair or straighten a rug. My biggest annoyance with today’s robot vacuum cleaners is that you still have to look at them to make sure they don’t get stuck under the furniture or over the hair of a beloved doll left on the floor.
All of this sounds good if it means the robot vacuum cleaner can go down the steps in the living room, turn around again, then go up the stairs to do the rest of the cleaning. Still, I’ll probably have to wait a few generations until I can allow yourself such an advanced void. I usually buy second-hand or refurbished Dyson products because it is often more affordable than buying a new unit directly. And then we should know if the robot that climbs the stairs has become sensitive and knocked us all down.