Toshiba Smarbo to challenge the Roomba

Robotic vacuum cleaners seem to be picking up these days, especially when more and more people get too busy in their everyday lives in order to do something as basic as sweep the house and keep it clean from dust bunnies. Well, it seems that Toshiba too wants to get it on the robotic vacuum cleaner game with the announcement of the Smarbo (something tells us that this is the short form of “Smart Robot”). Needless to say, something like this is meant to see action primarily in household and not offices.

Toshiba certainly did not skimp on features when it comes to manufacturing this robotic vacuum cleaner – they threw in a couple of unidentified CPUs (which is more than what I can say for some phones), a camera to help the robot “see”, while a set of 38 sensors (inclusive of gyro, acceleration, and range detection amongst others) to help it do a thorough job around the home.

According to Toshiba, the Smarbo is capable of cleaning an area of 100sqm in around 90 minutes, while chalking up just $0.03 in your monthly electricity bill for a room of that size. Similar to the Roomba in many ways, the Smarbo will also be able to circumvents objects in its vicinity and head back to its charging station once it has completed its task.

Toshiba intends to send the Smarbo into homes in Japan this on October 1st for around $1,175 after conversion – inclusive of a remote control and the charging station, of course.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Gadgets, Robots
Tags: Robot, Robotics, Robots, Toshiba