While it’s nice to have a robot vacuum your floors for you, a vacuum can only clean your house so much. For a really deep clean, you’ll also need to run a mop over the hard floor surfaces. [Josh] took this to its logical conclusion and built a robot that can really scour his floors for his entry into this year’s Hackaday Prize.
The robot has the ability to spray the floor with a cleaning solution, and then drive over it and scrub the floors with a squeegee. Its designed in a way that allows it to get into tight corners without needing a special brush, and of course it has all the bells and whistles that other robots have, such as ultrasonic sensors, collision detection, and a brain that allows it to navigate a course and get the entire area cleaned.
There are many videos of the robot in action on the project site, showing its operation and testing various features of the device. It’s a pretty interesting take on the home robot, and since its Open Hardware you can build your own if you’re often frustrated by having to mop your own floors, or you could modify it to do things other than squeegee the floors clean.
something something bristlebots
Robie Junior! What have they done to you?
+1 Alas poor Robbie, I knew him well.
is he referring to the ultrasonic range detector as a radar ?
Sonar would be a better term to use.
I would love to make one of these. Robot vacuums are low maintenance, just empty the dust bin once a day. Robot mops on the other hand are super high maintenance needing preparation and immediate attention once done. There’s a niche for a robot mop that looks after itself. Maybe it can refill itself from a filling station and use a low power heater in the base of that station to dry itself out. To be clear the filling station wouldn’t have a mains water connection, just a 5 litre bottle or something.
The problem with house cleaning robots is that the people capable of building them live with circuit boards and wires littering the bedroom floor (I’m mocking myself). So building one is a purely altruistic endeavour.
The bedroom is probably the room with the least incidence o boards and wires _ I don’t like to step on this stuff barefooted and half asleep. But my electronics room/working room on the other hand – here even my cleaning woman has her difficulties. I think a robot would be quite hopeless.
You still need to hoover first, so maybe a pair of robots that work together?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zcTjQ3ubYm8
Here is a much better video of operation and demonstrates the ultrasonic “radar” as well.