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Clean the house while you're out

Posted on 27 Apr 2012 at 09:11

Forget hoovering - that's what robots are for

No smart home would be complete without a robot cleaner. Samsung’s NaviBot SR8895 threatens to add to job-centre queues by getting on with the hoovering while you’re at work.

The NaviBot has a variety of modes. It can be set to clean every room on the floor automatically, weaving its way around in an orderly fashion; it can be set loose on a particular area, such as where the kids have been sat on the carpet with their lunch; or you can set its timer to get on with the cleaning while you’re out, or even at night – it’s quiet enough to not disturb people sleeping upstairs.

You can even use the remote control to steer it around your carpet manually, although that seems a little too labour-intensive for our liking.

The NaviBot is fitted with a barrage of sensors to help it avoid crashing, including a top-mounted camera that (allegedly) scans the ceiling to help it work out the best way to clean every section of floor.

In our tests, in an open-plan office with obstacles aplenty, the NaviBot navigated around the carpet effortlessly, occasionally bumping into chairs and desk legs, but quickly re-orientating itself and cleaning the floor in a logical pattern.

The NaviBot navigated around the carpet effortlessly, occasionally bumping into chairs and desk legs, but quickly re-orientating itself and cleaning the floor in a logical pattern

Once or twice it got snagged on a loose cable or magazine left lying on the floor, but provided a cursory clean-up of the room was undertaken before setting the NaviBot loose, we’d have few concerns about leaving it to its own devices.

Especially as Samsung provides two battery-powered “virtual guards” in the box, which can be placed at the top of staircases or near a nest of cables, and beam an infrared “invisible wall” that the NaviBot won’t pass.

Indeed, we left it locked overnight in a medium-sized room with crisps and cake crumbs scattered across the floor, and by the time we came back in the morning, the floor had been completely cleaned without mishap.

Impressively, when it’s close to running out of juice, the NaviBot navigates its way back to its docking station – even if you’ve picked it up and moved it in between.

For £350, this could certainly pay for itself if you’re currently employing a human cleaner – it even has a mop attachment for cleaning hard floors. Although it won’t clean your bathroom. And like the Daleks, it’s completely flummoxed by the stairs.

Author: Barry Collins