Robotics which are designed to clean the floors in your house is concept that is not new to CES, but has been primarily cover by only a couple of companies setting the price point for such products to price well over $260. CES 2010 brought one more company, Evolution Robotics, Inc. to spotlight with a lesser price tag, less moving parts, and a near silent running cycle and a much more advanced navigation than any competitor.
The “mint cleaner” in the short video below is running though the display booth floor using Northstar ™ Guidance which is a technology of projecting two invisible reference points on the ceiling by the small cube (shown briefly at the end of the video). The cleaner detects these reference points and using them to navigate the room to be sure to cover every corner and return to its original start point.
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| The Northstar® Guidance cube runs on C cell batteries and projects two reference points on the ceiling of the room being cleaned. | The cube is small in size and very simple in what it does for the mint cleaner. Though it can be placed anywhere b/c it is running on C cell batteries, there is no option to plug the cube into a standard AC outlet. |
The mint cleaner uses popular cleaning cloths such as Swiffer ® and Pledge® cleaning cloths for cleaning aids, so no need to clean out a small dust bin or flush out dirty water. Since the only moving parts are the navigation near silent motors, there is no small high RPM vacuum motor running which is also reduces the number of parts that can fail over time.
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| While standing in the demonstration booth the mint was cleaning the floor with a dry dust cloth. | Closer look of the underside of the mint. |
So if your looking for a near silent cleaning robot that is priced less than its closer competitor and doesn’t require special cleaning soaps, then check out the mint at http://www.mintcleaner.com
