We’ve all heard of Roomba, the frisbee-sized vacuum robot. Until recently we thought this slightly egregious piece of technology was the end-all-be-all of home cleaning innovation. Then we met Winbot. Made by Ecovacs Robotics—a company boasting 300-500 engineers on staff at any given time—the similarly-sized window cleaning robot uses multiple motors and an array of sensors to navigate any window, inside or out, without any …
When a creative brief tasked them to “make something connected to the Internet that doesn’t live on the screen,” Foundry, a small research team at Mint Digital, came up with Olly, a scent-based system rewarding social media activity or, as they describe it on their site, a “web-connected smelly robot.” Olly links up to web-based social applications and emits a fragrance—thankfully, one that you choose—when …
While scoping out the developments at CES in Las Vegas, we were delighted to meet Ava, a new mobile robotics platform prototype from the minds over at iRobot. Most will recognize iRobot’s past work on the low-profile automated robotic cleaners Roomba and Scooba. While Ava may lack her siblings’ sleek looks, she shines with potential as the world’s first app-ready robot. Standing between three and …
