Dyson, iRobot and Google : Robots for small budgets

Load the dishwasher, do the laundry, tidy up the children’s room: household robots could make everyday life much easier. The Dyson vacuum cleaner company has big plans – and they’re not the only ones.

“The bit of housekeeping that takes care of itself…” Johanna von Koczian’s hit song from the 1970s could soon become reality. At least if you can believe the future plans of companies like Dyson, Samsung, Google or iRobot.

Dyson builds robotics center on airfield

The British company Dyson, previously known primarily for its vacuum cleaners, has now announced at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Philadelphia that it will expand its business to include robots for the home. To this end, the company plans to hire 250 robotics engineers in the areas of computer vision, machine learning, sensors and mechatronics this year alone. In the next five years, 700 more robotics specialists are to follow.

A film, which has also been shared on social media, shows robotic hands developed by Dyson reaching for objects. The company is ambitious: “The master plan envisages building the largest and most advanced robotics center in Great Britain at Hullavington Airport and bringing the technology into private homes by the end of the decade,” says the press release. The research and development work is to be led by Dyson chief engineer Jake Dyson.

Sir Dyson’s electric car debacle

The inventor and designer Sir James Dyson is considered the richest Briton. According to the US business magazine “Forbes”, Dyson, who attended art school in London but has no engineering degree, has a fortune of eight billion dollars. Thanks to vacuum cleaners, fans, hand dryers, hair dryers and fan heaters. The self-made billionaire is the prime example that failure is part of the creative process.

In 2019, Dyson had to scrap the development of its electric car. Here, too, the inventor had big plans: his SUV would have weighed around 2.6 tons, but thanks to a powerful battery it would still have traveled 1000 kilometers and accelerated to 100 kilometers per hour in less than five seconds. In the end, it was all about great ideas – and a reported cost of around £500m.

Market for household robots is growing rapidly

Even if household robots are perhaps a slightly more obvious step for the vacuum cleaner company Dyson than electric cars, the still new market is no less fiercely contested. So far, the market for household robots has mainly included vacuum or window cleaning robots. But now there are other activities such as loading and unloading the dishwasher, tidying up the children’s room and doing the laundry.

The market for digital household help is growing rapidly. The International Federation of Robotics puts the sales potential this year at $8.2 billion. The 10 billion dollar mark is to be broken as early as next year. For comparison: Two years ago, the revenues from household robots were five billion dollars.

iRobot is also working on household robots with hands

So it’s no wonder that Dyson isn’t the only one wanting a piece of this cake. The vacuum robot specialist iRobot is also working on mechanical household helpers that have hands. “We’re at a point where we’re beginning to understand the environment we’re operating in enough to be able to do something like this,” said iRobot CEO Colin Angle last year. In the industry, however, people are still puzzling over what the task of the first household robot with arms will be, Angle said. “Do the laundry? Wash the dishes? Or clean the room before vacuuming?”

Meanwhile, the South Korean electronics giant Samsung has long since had the “Samsung Bot” trademark protected. There are already first announcements and videos of a robot called “Samsung Bot Handy”, which loads a dishwasher, collects laundry lying around and sets the table. The videos show that the robot has pattern recognition. Samsung should certainly also benefit from its AI expertise, which the group has gained in smartphone development.

“Everyday Robots” work at Google

But the big technology companies have long since recognized the trend in household robotics: Google’s sister company “X” is active in this area. The “Everyday Robots” are already being used on the Google campus: they open doors, clean windows, clean the tables in the cafeteria and empty the wastebasket.

The race for market leadership for the first household robot that can do more than just vacuum cleaning is still completely open. How quickly “that little bit of household” really takes care of itself in the future will depend not least on how much consumers would be willing to pay for such an innovation.