William "Bill" M. Brobeck joined the UC Berkeley lab in 1937 and moved several years later to Orinda with his late wife, Jane Knox. Their home became a local landmark in the mid-1950s, after Mr. Brobeck used his engineering talents to build an automatic lawn mower. Neighborhood kids would gather outside…
The gasoline-powered Fairbanks-Morse Grass Finder has no cord. Run it around the outside of your lawn once to give it the feel of things and from then on it runs itself, feeling for the high uncut grass with its left hand, as it were, and following along the edge of…
Source: Popular Science, Mar 1950 Mows Lawn by Radio—Pretty Soft! WHILE his robot lawn mower chugs around the lawn, Jim Walker, of Portland, Ore., takes it easy in his glider, sipping a cool drink and operating the radio controls. Walker, a radio ham, long-time builder of radio-controlled model…
Source: Mechanix Illustrated, Oct, 1938 (from blog.modernmechanix.com ) Builds Remote Control Lawn Mower Device Attaching two electric – motors, an old paint can, a wooden mixing bowl from a kitchen, sundry gears, wires and drive belts to a regulation lawn mower, Alvin Lodge, an unemployed mechanical engineer of Millersville, Pa., constructed…
Product Description (of Version 2.0) Imagine pushing a button, walking away, and having clean floors an hour later. That futuristic scenario is now here with the Trilobite, the hands-free, "intelligent" robotic vacuum first introduced in Europe by Electrolux. While it isn't the first robotic home vacuum, the Trilobite is a…
Noo-Noo (operated by Mark Dean) is the Teletubbies' sky blue pet. He is in Teletubbyland as a type of vacuum cleaner. He rarely leaves the House. He doesn't speak like Teletubbies can; he makes sucking and slurping noises. At times, Noo-Noo gets annoyed with the Teletubbies' antics or get too…
1983 Household robot concept by a Japanese magazine. As well as the floor scrubber and mop, there are other cooking and serving functions as well. (Source : ?) See other early remote-controlled and robotic vacuum cleaners and floor scrubbers here.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., produces its first patent for a "Self-Running Cleaning Apparatus" in 1990. Publication number US5109566 A . Also published as US5284522 Publication date May 5, 1992 Filing date Jun 28, 1990 Inventors Osamu Eguchi, Yasumichi Kobayashi, Shinji Kondoh, Haruo Terai, Hidetaka Yabuuchi Original Assignee Matsushita Electric Industrial…
Early Automatic and Robotic Floor Cleaners 1899 - L'AN 2000 Floor Sweeper Prediction 1928 - Televox capable of switching appliances on and off 1940 – “Roll-Oh” the Domestic Robot 1949 - Tony Sale - George the Robot attempting Vacuuming 1955 - Sonic Broom 1957 - RCA/Whirlpool HECK and Automatic Floor Cleaner…
The maid remote-controlling the electric floor scrubber. France in the Year 2000 (XXI century) – a series of futuristic pictures by Jean-Marc Côté in France in 1899. Originally in the form of paper cards enclosed in cigarette/cigar boxes, the images depicted the world as it was imagined to be like…