Evolution Robotics was an American technological company based in

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. Its ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. It specialized in

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist humans. Robotics integrat ...

technologies with their product range covering

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

, localization and autonomous navigation. Evolution Robotics cooperated with Cambridge University for research in vision technology. Software products of Evolution Robotics were licensed by the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology and the Sony Robotics Division and were part of

WowWee WowWee Group Limited, is a privately owned, Hong Kong-based Canadian consumer technology company. History Initially from Canada, the two founding brothers (Richard and Peter Yanofsky) moved to Hong Kong to form the company in 1982, as an independ ...

robots like ''Rovio''. On September 17, 2012 it was announced that Evolution Robotics was acquired by

iRobot iRobot Corporation is an American technology company that designs and builds consumer robots. It was founded in 1990 by three members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who designed robots for space exploration and military defense. The com ...

for $74 Million.

Products

In January 2010, Evolution Robotics released ''Mint'', a cleaning robot which dusts and wet-mops hard surface floors. The robot's "wet mopping mode" has a coverage of 93 sq m (1000 sq ft) and 23 sq m (250 sq ft). The Mint lacks a vacuum motor and is one of the quietest floor cleaning robots. The Mint was described as a "not fully autonomous robot" hence a cleaning cloth has to be attached to the cleaning pad before using it. For navigation, the robot uses an

indoor navigation system An indoor positioning system (IPS) is a network of devices used to locate people or objects where GPS and other satellite technologies lack precision or fail entirely, such as inside multistory buildings, airports, alleys, parking garages, and und ...

called NorthStar. Mint used a navigation cube as a beacon for navigation, and the original model was only able to handle one of these beacons at a time. On September 14, 2011, Evolution Robotics announced the second model of the Mint family, called ''Mint Plus''. The robot represents an improved version of the original Mint, supporting multiple NorthStar cubes at a time. An additional feature of the new robot is the ability to continue work at the same spot if the machine is interrupted during cleaning. Mint Plus features an automatic cleaning solution dispenser that keeps the cloth wet during cleaning. One of the two Mint Plus robots has an installed docking station that has a function of a charging stand where the robot can be placed manually. In 2013, Evolution Robotics Mint was rebranded as

iRobot Braava iRobot Corporation is an American technology company that designs and builds consumer robots. It was founded in 1990 by three members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who designed robots for space exploration and military defense. The com ...

References

External links

http://evolution.com/
− Website of Evolution Robotics (archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Evolution Robotics Defunct robotics companies of the United States Information technology companies of the United States Defunct companies based in California Companies based in Pasadena, California