Fuji Heavy Industries and Sumitomo have developed a cute robot that can help human workers clean offices. It’s a follow up to a simpler model the two companies unveiled ten years ago. This new robot can navigate through spaces full of desks, office equipment and other obstacles (including humans).
The battery-powered robot can move around at 30m per minute and is equipped with a laser range finder: before bumping into an obstacle or human, it says “Please get out of the way, I am cleaning this room!”. If nothing happens for 15 seconds, the robot will move around the obstacle and continue to do its job (at around 0:45 in the video below).
According to Fuji Heavy and Sumitomo, the robot runs 2.5 hours on one charge and cuts cleaning time by around 50%. It’s already commercialized (in Japan, at least).
This video shows the robot (and a human colleague) in action:
Via Robonable [JP]