Wiping out the chores

So much more household drudgery could be eliminated if there were a wider range of robot helpers.

- Peter Griffin

The domestic robot revolution has been slow to get off the ground literally. By now, home automation should have done away with many mundane household chores. But beyond the robotic vacuum cleaner and mop, the newly emerging lawn-mowing robot, which you can now buy for about $1500, and the pool-cleaning bot, we haven't seen any real time-saving innovations since the dishwasher's debut.

Window cleaning is a particularly vexed issue for me. I live in an apartment building on the 12th floor. There are no balconies. I have huge windows offering a fantastic view of Wellington Harbour, but I can't reach the exterior of them myself.

Near the ocean and exposed to Wellington's prevailing northerly winds, my windows typically end up coated in a misty film of sea spray within a couple of weeks of the building's quarterly window wash.

The Winbot W1 Pro seemed like the perfect solution, but the health and safety aspects of a robot crawling around on the outside of my window filled me with dread. What if it fell off and landed on a neighbour's head?