Earlier this yr, we reviewed the SwitchBot S10, a vacuuming and moist mopping robotic that makes use of a water-integrated docking system to autonomously handle each clear and soiled water for you. It’s a reasonably intelligent resolution, and we appreciated that SwitchBot was prepared to attempt one thing slightly completely different.
At CES this week, SwitchBot launched the K20+ Professional, slightly autonomous vacuum that may combine with a bunch of various equipment by pulling them round on a backpack cart of types. The K20+ Professional is SwitchBot’s newest effort to discover what’s doable with cellular house robots.
SwitchBot’s small vacuum can transport completely different payloads on prime.SwitchBot
What we’re here’s a “mini” robotic vacuum (it’s about 25 centimeters in diameter) that does every little thing a robotic vacuum does these days: It makes use of lidar to make a map of your own home to be able to direct it the place to go, it’s acquired a dock to empty itself and recharge, and so forth. The mini robotic vacuum is connected to a wheeled platform that SwitchBot is asking a “FusionPlatform” that sits on prime of the robotic like a hat. The vacuum docks to this platform, after which the platform will go wherever the robotic goes. This whole system (robotic, dock, and platform) is the “K20+ Professional multitasking family robotic.”
SwitchBot refers back to the K20+ Professional as a “good supply assistant,” as a result of you may put stuff on the FusionPlatform and the K20+ Professional will transfer that stuff round your own home for you. This actually doesn’t do it justice, although, as a result of the platform is way more than only a passive cellular cart. It can also present energy to a bunch of various equipment, all of which profit from autonomous mobility:
The SwitchBot can carry quite a lot of payloads, together with customized payloads.SwitchBot
From left to proper, you’re an air circulation fan, a pill stand, a vacuum and charging dock and an air air purifier and safety digital camera (and a stick vacuum for some motive), and lastly simply the air air purifier and safety setup. You can too add and take away completely different bits, like if you need the fan together with the safety digital camera, simply plop the safety digital camera down on the platform base in entrance of the fan and also you’re good to go.
This primary idea is considerably just like Amazon’s Proteus robotic, within the sense that you would be able to have one good powered base that strikes round a bunch of much less good and unpowered payloads by driving beneath them after which carrying them round. However SwitchBot’s payloads aren’t simply passive cargo, and the bottom can present them with a helpful quantity of energy.
An influence port lets you develop your individual payloads for the robotic.SwitchBot
SwitchBot is actively encouraging customers to “to create, adapt, and personalize the robotic for all kinds of modern purposes,” which can embrace “3D-printed elements [or] third-party gadgets with a number of energy ports for audio system, automotive fridges, and even UV sterilization lamps,” in keeping with the press launch. The utmost payload is just 8 kilograms, although, so don’t get too loopy.
A number of SwitchBots could make bathtub time way more fulfilling.SwitchBot
What all of us wish to know is when somebody will put an arm on this factor, and SwitchBot is after all already engaged on this:
SwitchBot’s cellular manipulator remains to be within the lab stage.SwitchBot
The arm remains to be “within the lab stage,” SwichBot says, which I’m guessing signifies that the {hardware} is practical however that getting it to reliably do helpful stuff with the arm remains to be a piece in progress. However that’s okay—getting an arm to reliably do helpful stuff is a piece in progress for all of robotics, just about. And if SwitchBot can handle to provide an reasonably priced cellular manipulation platform for customers that even kind of works, that’ll be very spectacular.
