vRobot – Mini Robot Vacuum Cleaner Features

The latest intelligent mini vRobot vacuum cleaner! Simply power on the vRobot mini vacuum cleaner and it will maneuverer all over your home vacuuming, while you sit back and relax.

This special robot vacuum cleaner comes with 3 setting anti-cliff sensors modes for different reflective surfaces, unlike its predecessors, this unique feature allows you to set the sensors according to your floor color, the darker the floor color, the higher the anti-cliff sensor setting should be set. Read the rest of this entry »

Vacuum Cleaner Senses Human Emotions

A specially-equipped Roomba robot vacuum cleaner can now sense human emotional states. University of Calgary researchers published their results in a paper titled “Using Bio-electrical Signals to Influence the Social Behaviours of Domesticated Robots.”

Using a special headband to capture bioelectric signals from the forehead of a human user, the system collects this data and then infers stress from muscle tension readings. Their control software reinterprets natural muscle tension as estimating the user’s stress level; the more muscle tension, the more stress is inferred.

“Two distinct robotic behaviours corresponding to two extreme emotional states, either relaxed or stressed, are triggered when the stress reading reach a threshold. Robot actions are then influenced by these stress readings. When a person shows high stress (~levels 3 & 4), the robot enters its cleaning mode but moves away from the user so as not annoy them. When a person is relaxed (~level 1), the robot (if cleaning) approaches the person and then stops, simulating a pet sitting next to its owner. If the reading is in between these two levels, the robot continues operating in its current mode until the stress reading reaches a threshold.”

The unique feature of this system is that the robot’s behavior is controlled by human emotion rather than by some sort of explicit commands. There have been other attempts to give robots or computers some ability to sense human emotions. In one study, it was found that nanny robots could sense the emotions of autistic children. Another project — the Sensitive Artificial Listener (SAL) — tried to detect the verbal cues provided by emotional humans.

Giant Robot Vacuum Cleaner

What happens when one of those huge litter-collecting trucks with the round swishing brushes starts buying drinks for a Roomba? The Intellibot IV800 is what, the offspring of a curious union of old-school power and carpet-wandering brains. Barona Valley Ranch Casino in San Diego is deploying the fridge-sized robot vacuum cleaners — and, of course, using it to get rid of a few positions.

Testing the new Roomba (as a LEGO battle platform)

My kids are growing up with real robots in the house, from Dad’s UAVs to Roomba. And being 21st Century natives, they think nothing of it–of course the vacuum cleaner is autonomous. Read the rest of this entry »