Samsung has unveiled a new robotic vacuum cleaner that aims to move beyond iRobot's popular Roomba series and others with optics. The VC-RL87W gets an integrated camera and doubles as a controllable home monitor. Samsung's robot can send a video feed using a feature called Tango View. The device can't clean and act as a home monitor at the same time, however.
iRobot kicked off its presence at CES by unveiling two long due updates for its home cleaning robots. The Roomba 700 provides better cleaning of finer dirt and hair; it accordingly has twin HEPA filters to cut back on allergic reactions. The robot is also now smart enough to move back and forth in a particularly dirty area to clean where a single pass wouldn't have worked.
Neato Robotics on Wednesday introduced a robotic vacuum cleaner that will automatically clean floors. The XV-11 is the first such device to use laser vision to avoid most obstacles in a room without hitting them. Thanks to the RPS tech, the XV-11 has a 360-degree view of a room and can see doorways, walls, furniture and other obstacles that are more than four inches tall and up to over 13 feet away. It is also short enough, at just under four inches, to clean under beds and couches. Its D-shaped design also lets it get deeper into corners for more thorough cleaning. Its dirt bin is sized at 0.69 quarts.
iRobot today rolled out two extra Roomba vacuum robots targeted at specific subsets of its normal audience. The Pet Series adjusts the components inside the robot to focus more on catching pet hair as well as the dander that often triggers allergies. Each now has an extra set of brushes and holds much more in the sweeping bin than usual to catch the material that might quickly fill up a normal robot; the counter-rotating brushes are claimed to be good for picking up material either from carpet or hard floors.
