WHEN you think “robotic vacuum cleaner,” those circular bois that float around your apartment bumping into everything no doubt come to mind. But Dyson is taking the phrase “robotic vacuum cleaner” one step further, with an actual robot. Dyson detailed its ambitions in advanced robotics, signalling its plan to “accelerate development of an autonomous device capable of household chores.” In a video Dyson released, robotic hands grasped objects such as plates and toys. The company isn’t diverting too far from its robotic floor-based vacuums, rather it’s been trying to take that tech a little further. “There’s a big future in robotics, saving people time, performing chores for people and improving people’s daily lives,” explains Jake Dyson, a designer at Dyson and the son of founder James Dyson. Until now, Dyson’s robots have been floor-based vacuum cleaners — the first of which, the DC06, was designed 20 years ago. “We’ve been working for about 20 years now on floor care robotics, which are puck format robots — and ours really do vacuum, by the way — but aside from that, we’ve also been doing a lot of research into robotics, which no one’s aware of,” Dyson added. Dyson has actually now set up a number of offices (in the U.K. and Singapore), to bring these robot dreams to life. (SD-Agencies) | 