couldn’t possibly
achieve,” Dyson
explained.
FIGURE 8.
truly autonomous machine, rather
than a glorified carpet sweeper.
Propulsion and battery life will be key,
and we’re getting closer,” Dyson
commented. He intends to bring out
a superior robot vacuum cleaner
very soon.
His reasoning for scrapping the
original model was its high price, poor
battery performance, and suction not
up to his company’s high standards.
Dyson was satisfied with the
machine’s sensor/microcontroller
system and the required programming, but his ‘Dual Cyclone’ vacuum
system was difficult to implement in
such a small device. “An automatic
vacuum cleaner must clean as well
as the best mains powered vacuum
cleaner and with the sort of
methodical coverage a human being
German
Robotics
KUKA Roboter,
based in Augsburg,
Germany is another
robot company that
has installations
in most of the
industrialized
countries of the
world. With a line of
over 100 models,
mostly painted orange (is this a
European robot color tradition?),
this German company began
operations in 1989 and entered the
US market in 1995.
One of their most unique
products is the Robocoaster — a large
robot arm with one or two seats
attached, acting as an amusement
park ride. Figure 8 shows two people
experiencing the ride at a robot
exhibition.
Germany has not been left out
of the consumer robot market. The
German designed and built Kärcher
RC3000 Robocleaner is a pretty good
robot vacuum. It basically operates
much the same as the other popular
brands. It does, however, have one
unique feature: It automatically takes
its collected dirt and dust back to the
combination base station/charger unit
as seen in Figure 9 and deposits it,
recharges itself, and heads back out
to clean another room. Unlike some of
the other top end robot vacuums, the
Kärcher does not use room mapping,
relying instead on the random
cleaning approach. Kärcher has been
around for years and has built the
popular KMR 1200 commercial road
sweeper that they are now looking to
make entirely autonomous. Priced at
an average of $1,500, the RC3000 is
quite a bit more expensive than the
Roomba but does offer some
attractive features. It has not been as
popular as the Trilobite here in the US
but seems to be selling quite well in
the UK and the rest of Europe.
Robotics
Development is
Shared in Most
European Countries
FIGURE 9.
Europe has long been a leader in
robotics technology. Reis Robotics in
Obernburg, Germany, the Fraunhofer
Institute for Manufacturing
Engineering and Automation in
Stuttgart, Germany, the European
Robotics Association based in Brussels,
Belgium, the LIRA-Lab at the
University of Genova, Italy, and the
TKK Automation Technology
Laboratory at the University of Finland
in Helsinki are just a few of the many
world-class companies, organizations,
and universities in Europe that have
made world news lately in the field
of robotics.
NASA is not the only space
agency developing lunar and
planetary rover technology. The
European Space Agency (ESA) has
been interested in studying the lunar
craters at the Moon’s poles, long
thought to hold deposits of frozen
water. Not only is this necessary for
lunar-based astronauts to drink, it is
also an important source of hydrogen
and oxygen for fuel and breathing.
Lunar orbiters have detected water
vapor emissions but rovers are the
key to determining just how much ice
is available.
This European agency established
78 SERVO 04.2009