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The State of Household Robots
paulelaguna writes "The dream of owning a household robot is starting to become reality, particularly for people in Japan. There are robots to help you do the dishes, move furniture, and even robotic wheelchairs to help you get around. Really, the only question that remains for us is when do we move?"
How about the XKCD Pet Netbook Robot? :)
It's finally been turned into a reality using a One Laptop Per Child XO-1 + and an Arduino microcontroller via Project Butia!
visit my pal the xkcd explainer!
I have one (a 500) it works very well. It may not be as powerful as a normal vacuum cleaner, but it makes up for it by vacuuming longer and more often (you can run it daily). In fact it cleans better than I do myself, it also can go easily underneath the couch and bed.
It runs at my home on carpet and wood floor, and I know someone who has the scooba which cleans a wood floor using a water based solution as well. You do need to be sure there are no cable on the floor that it can suck up and get entangled with, also small objects on the floor can be dragged by it across the house, with mobile phones ending up in a corner behind the couch.
It can follow the sides of the room, but it can not reach deep into a corner, it also follows table legs. Also if it finds a lot of dirt it will make a small circle to try and clean it up.
When you run the roomba daily you need to empty it once every three days (but I get a lot of dust because I live across a park).
Well, they got a good start on the folding part (at least for towels).
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
All that stuff seems perfectly buildable for an enthusiastic DIY'er. Chances are you are just like me though, knowing full-well that it could be created but leaving the actual work and invention/innovation to someone with more skills. =P