The winner of the Electrolux Design contest features these tiny, bug-like robots that will do your chores for you. The future can’t come soon enough
Nobody likes cleaning the house. So why not get a flying robot to do it, right? That’s what 23-year-old Adrian Perez Zapata thought too. Except he’s not happy with one or two–he wants a swarm of them.
Zapata’s concept, called Mab, has just won Electrolux’s Design Lab competition. In his vision, 908 mini-robots fly about your home, making an assessment of what’s looking dirty. Then, from a range of options, you decide what needs cleaning that day. The insect-like machines venture out, depositing tiny amounts of water and cleaning solution onto surfaces. Then, having sucked up the dirty liquid, the swarm returns to its “core,” where it unloads.
“I was in my university gardens when I observed the controlled flight of bees pollinating a flower, and how magical it is to see swarms of bees working together,” the inventor says.
“My concept Mab only requires a short initial configuration to function autonomously, so you could arrive home and see a swarm of mini-robots roaming around cleaning independently. This means you could sit back and relax, as you observe with great astonishment the little Mab fairies working their magic.”
The robots fly by spinning tiny propellers; their energy comes from built-in solar panels, and the core unit. Zapata says he was inspired by “robo-bee” research at Harvard (which we covered here).
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Swarming Micro Robot Cleaners
- Microrobots tested as clean-up crew for polluted waters
Researchers have pioneered the use of innovative microrobots designed to tackle and effectively manage microplastic pollution.
- Microrobotic Swarms Tackle Microplastics and Bacteria Pollution
In recent research published in the journal ACS Nano, researchers reported how swarms of microscale robots, or microrobots, collected microorganisms and plastic fragments from water.
- Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously
When old food packaging, discarded children's toys and other mismanaged plastic waste break down into microplastics, they become even harder to clean up from oceans and waterways. These tiny bits of ...
- Magnetic microrobot swarms clean water of microplastics and bacteria
Microplastics are one of the biggest environmental and health risks faced by our generation. Now, researchers have developed swarms of tiny robots, or microrobots, that not only microplastics from ...
- Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously (video)
When old food packaging, discarded children’s toys and other mismanaged plastic waste break down into microplastics, they become even harder to clean up from oceans and waterways. These tiny bits of ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Swarming Micro Robot Cleaners
[google_news title=”” keyword=”Swarming Micro Robot Cleaners” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
Go deeper with Bing News on:
Swarm of mini-robots
- Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously
When old food packaging, discarded children's toys and other mismanaged plastic waste break down into microplastics, they become even harder to clean up from oceans and waterways. These tiny bits of ...
- Swarm of tiny snail robots stick together to form new structures
Researchers have built a swarm of miniature, snail-inspired robots, minus all the mucus. Instead, a retractable suction cup works in tandem with the remote-controlled machine’s tank-like treads to ...
- Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously (IMAGE)
To clean water, researchers have designed swarms of tiny, spherical robots (light yellow) that collect bacteria (green) and small pieces of plastic (gray). Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not ...
- Swarms of miniature robots clean up microplastics and microbes, simultaneously (video)
When old food packaging, discarded children’s toys and other mismanaged plastic waste break down into microplastics, they become even harder to clean up from oceans and waterways. These tiny bits of ...
- Video: Iron-shelled robo-snails swarm together for off-road tasks
In recent years we've heard a lot about "swarm robotics." This concept involves utilizing small robots that can work either on their own or as one facet of a group of identical bots. In the latter ...
Go deeper with Google Headlines on:
Swarm of mini-robots
[google_news title=”” keyword=”swarm of mini-robots” num_posts=”5″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]