Now available: Robot vacuum cleaner that helps with home chores

Robot vacuum cleaner

Today’s lifestyle just sees families and individuals getting busier by the day. The long hours at work, traffic jams while commuting to and fro leaves little to spend at home with family, not to talk of time for daily house chores.

The health of the individual and family depends on domestic hygiene. So, what do you do if you are in a situation where you seem not to have enough time to keep the house as clean as you want? Or if you are the type who is not open to strangers for personal or security reasons, yet you want the pleasure of a clean apartment? Or assume you have an infant crawling around the house as they learn to walk and you are concerned about the child picking germs from a dirty or dusty floor, therefore floors have to be constantly kept clean.


You could consider getting help from a robot. It may sound futuristic, but automation is fast coming to the domestic scene.

Few things are better than having robots perform your chores for you. While wireless robot vacuums have been on the market for years, the earliest models were clumsy and not very good at their jobs. That has changed as technology has improved, however, and now LG has announced its latest offering: the Hom-Bot Square.

The Hom-Bot square is a small robot vacuum cleaner that was previously referred to as the Hom-Bot 3.0. This updated Hom-Bot vacuum features a new square shape (hence its name), as well as longer side brushes and a larger body. According to the announcement, it is 72per cent more efficient at cleaning corners than the previous model.

Capable of tackling all manner of surface types, the LG HOM-BOT Square combines ultrasonic and infrared sensors to help it detect obstructions and solid objects, meaning it will not simply run around your room bumping into anything in sight.

Adding to the Hom-Bot Square’s extensive features list, the new robot vacuum cleaner has two inbuilt cameras: a forward-facing camera and top-mounted camera combining to help the device learn its surroundings and better avoid potentially messy and expensive collisions. Taking several pictures per second, the two cameras work together to help the device learn its location, gaining smart insights from its surrounds to better clean the room.

The top camera performs ceiling localisation and mapping, while the sensors create a map of the room it’s in and keeps the device’s placement within it. The top camera has a sensor that can adjust to darker settings called Illumination Invariant-based Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping, II-SLAM for short. The device uses ultra-sonic distance sensors, and has a learning function that allows it to adjust to the room where it is.

As well as offering touch controls, the Hom-Bot also relays information to the users while in use through a selection of 90 voice alerts, including updates on the unit’s self-diagnostic features.

With sharp right-angles being found in practically every building in the world, LG engineers based the new Hom-Bot on a square, different from the circular design of most robot cleaners. The cleaner’s unique square design, hi-tech sensors and newly improved brushes (1.5cm longer than those in the previous model) are collectively called Corner Master and enable the device to more effectively reach corner areas that regular cleaners simply ignore.

Corner-detecting sensors supply the cleaner with spatial information, telling it when the edge of the room has been reached, when to turn and when to stop. Sensitive Dual Eye 2.0 camera sensors underneath the cleaner scan the floor, sampling multiple images per second and then analyse the information to generate an accurate map of the space - even with the lights off.

LG’s Hom-Bot Square also has a turbo mode, which allows the user to manually set cleaning functions to the specific requirements of their flooring. Added is the smart turbo mode that enables the cleaner to detect the type of flooring and change its own settings automatically. This means the cleaner can detect when the floor type has changed like from tiles to carpet as it moves along and will adjust the Turbo mode to suit the floor type.

A lithium polymer battery maintains 95per cent of designed capacity after 300 cycles of recharge. When the battery runs out, it will automatically return to the home station to recharge. Also, after completing the cleaning cycle, Hom-Bot Square automatically returns to its charging dock, therefore you do not have to bother about it getting missing after the task is completed.
Like the versions before it, the Hom-Bot Square can clean in spiral, zig zag, and cell by cell modes; it also features a mode which lets it clean a specific area one time, after which point its memory will reset. The device, which was launched globally late last year, is available in Nigeria.
My radio keeps me alive - Agbenike
Daniel Olubukola Agbenike is a pilot and the CEO of AVIDAN Support, an aircraft service. He speaks on his electronic gadget and its usefulness.

What is your favourite gadget?
It may sound funny, but my radio had always been my favourite electronic gadget. I am a radio freak and I think I am always alive when I am with it.

What do you use it for mainly?
I am a kind of person that loves listening to music and I can always get load of music through my radio and most importantly, it keeps me alive, updates as well as gives me an idea of what is going on in my immediate environment and beyond.

What could you do to make it better?
Better? I don’t always have problem with my radio. I usually opt for good products. In fact, virtually all my electronics are SONY products and I have never regretted going for them.
Source: Tribune