Samsung of Korea has adapted a navigation system from cruise missiles for building a vacuum cleaner that won’t lose its way (GB 2376537). To navigate around a room, robot vacuum cleaners keep track of how far they have travelled from a fixed point, which they do by monitoring how fast their wheels are turning. But if the wheels slip the robot gets confused.
Samsung suggests putting a video camera and infrared LED on top of the cleaner to capture an IR image, even in the dark. It continually compares this image with a wide-angle photograph of the room in…
