Billionaire British inventor Sir James Dyson has been secretly working on robots to take on mundane household chores, it has been revealed.
The creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner and bladeless fan has given a hint of the firm’s hi-tech household helpers by releasing a video and images of robotic arms cleaning furniture, washing up and picking up discarded toys.
Unveiled at an international conference on robotics in Philadelphia, his son Jake gave the world a glimpse of the Mrs Mops of the future.
The footage shows sophisticated, claw-like arms picking up crockery, laying the table, gently picking up a teddy that has been dropped and even cleaning the back of the sofa in case of dropped food like crisps.
Jake, chief engineer at Dyson, said: “This means I’ll never ever find crisps down the back of my sofa again.
“There’s a big future in robotics and saving people time, performing chores for people, and improving daily lives. I’m a parent, I spend half my life cleaning up after my kids, and it’s pretty tedious.”
In the video screened at the conference this week, he told how the company has kept its robotics research under wraps for 20 years.
It has also been working with top brains at London’s Imperial College for the last 10 years to develop robots to carry out everyday chores around the house.
He said while the project has been “top secret” the innovative firm was now on the look out for 700 engineers over the next five years to work on the “robotic brain” and make the sci-fi scheme a reality by 2032.
The robotics engineers will be working at the Dyson research centre at its Hullavington airfield site, near the design centre in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, as well as a new lab near Imperial College and at its Singapore headquarters as part of a £2.75 billion investment in technology and new products.
Jake said: “This is a ‘big bet’ on future robotic technology that will drive research across the whole of Dyson, in areas including mechanical engineering, vision systems, machine learning and energy storage.
“Robots are the future of Dyson.”
