A short history of cleaning robots

The definition of the desired functions and the design of an ultimate versa tile personal robot is an ongoing debate. Meanwhile, however, precursors of this yet to evolve species are well on their way to become commercial prod ucts. Cleaning robots for public environments as well as for private househ olds seem to be able to provide the breakthrough which the designers of non -industrial robot systems have long awaited. This survey describes a selection of 30 different cleaning robots, with the first developments reaching back more than 15 years. With a few exceptions we have focused on floor cleaning, in particular indoor floor cleaning. We describe a variety of scrubbing and vacuuming robots which were developed for this task. The described systems range from heavy, large, and expensive industrial cleaning vehicles to small-size, light-weight, low-cost househo ld devices. The survey does not include, however, systems for cleaning faca des of buildings, or windows, or production tools. Although not all of the 30 cleaning robots abovementioned have yet reached the state of commercial products, their number alone certainly reflects the expectations regarding the economic value associated with the automation o f cleaning tasks. In Europe only the estimates for the market for cleaning services range up to the order of US$ 100 billion per year. It is therefore not surprising that the cleaning industry and the manufacturers of cleanin g devices are rather enthusiastic with respect to the automation of cleanin g tasks using (semi-)autonomous mobile robot systems.