It's widely assumed that one day we'll all have robot servants roaming our homes like The Jetsons' Rosie, but the humble robot vacuums used to clean our floors today are basically their great-great grandparents—except they're not so humble any more. Instead of blindly bouncing around a space like the Roomba does, Samsung's new POWERbot VR9000 uses digital cameras and sensors to completely map out a room, and your entire home, to plot the most efficient cleaning course.
Compared to the original Roomba, the POWERbot VR9000 is like R2-D2 versus Terminator 2's T-1000. We all love Artoo, but he wouldn't stand a chance against that shape-shifter. Using cyclone-like suction technology similar to what Dyson developed years ago, Samsung claims the VR9000 has 60 times the sucking power of other robot vacs, which means that whether on carpet, tile, or hard wood, your floors are going to get clean.
As it crawls over your floors, an extra-wide brush bar leads the way, ensuring the VR9000 grabs dirt even at the edge of your walls. And using the aforementioned built-in digital camera and other optical sensors, the robot can create a map of your entire home complete with occasional obstacles it needs to avoid like furniture and randomly dropped kids' toys. If it does miss a spot, the VR9000 can be easily guided back to a specific location using a wireless remote.
Like any good robot vacuum available today, the POWERbot VR9000 is smart enough to know when its battery is running low, automatically returning and reconnecting to its charging base to ensure it never completely dies in the middle of a job. And while Samsung hasn't revealed pricing info just yet, the VR9000 will be available sometime in the spring in a couple of color options if you need your robovac to match your decor. [Samsung]
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