Robo vacuums

Embrace the very latest in autonomous tech and let a robot clean the floors for you. And without even a sniff of complaint

- Derek Adams

Let’s face it, if there’s a way to make our daily lives easier and less timeconsuming and someone suddenly invents a machine that performs a particular household task for us, we’ll bite their arm off. Indeed, most of us have probably already got a dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer doing all the hard graft, so why not go the whole nine yards and include a machine that sweeps the floors, automatically, on its own, with almost zero human effort?

The historic timeline of robotic vacuum cleaners goes way back to 1997 when BBC’s Tomorrow’s World featured an early prototype of 2001’s Electrolux Trilobite, the world’s first commercially-available robot vacuum cleaner. This autonomous domestic bot was so futuristic it even boasted obstacle-avoiding ultrasonic sensors. Soon after, iRobot launched its first Roomba model and it was an even bigger hit, especially among techsavvy early adopters.

Fast forward a couple of decades and today’s robot vacs are brimming with bundles of user-friendly tech and delivering better floor-cleaning results than ever before. Moreover, the recent dramatic increase in manufacturers jumping on the vac wagon – particularly from China – will not only help advance the already rock-solid technology powering today’s generation of robot vacs, but the sheer volume of different brands and models hitting the market will almost certainly bring dramatically lower prices.

WHAT IS A ROBOT VACUUM?