Vorwerk goes into sales with its cleaning cobot - Aeon Robotics wants to clean by hand

Three months ago, it was exclusively reported here that the Thermomix manufacturer Vorwerk intends to sell a professional cleaning robot. Nexaro, the name of the Vorwerk subsidiary, held back at that time, but nevertheless used the term "Cobot" intensively. Sales will start in October and a first video is available. Time for an update.

Nexaro/ Vorwerk uses the term "Cobot" classically

The Nexaro differs from the Kemaro robot from Switzerland, which was introduced here a long time ago. While the latter is a compact sweeper, the Nexaro NR 1500 is a vacuum cleaner, which corresponds to a core competence of Vorwerk ("Kobold"). Subsequently, however, even larger devices are to be launched on the market. These will no longer be as compact as an AMR, but significantly larger and can in this respect be seen as competitors to the Kärcher models.

That the Nexaro is technically top-notch is suggested by its 28 sensors. These help it to pay attention to people and to other working robots of the brand. Thus, it also fulfills the criteria for fleet management. The mapping is AI-supported. The aforementioned consideration or intended cooperation with humans leads Vorwerk to call it a "cobot." A paper points out that the cobot market is expected to grow by 76% in the next 5 years.

What are Vorwerk's medium-term plans?

The crucial question is: Will Vorwerk stay on the ground and clean or will more follow? I think more is to be expected in the medium term. And my money is still on a household robot like the one Neura Robotics presented with its Mipa at automatica. After all, the main developments can be transferred: navigation, collision avoidance etc. Whether more can be expected also depends on the qualifications of the developers. Nexaro itself counts only 10 employees at LinkedIn. So the technology is too bought.

The video on the website is worth watching and underlines the commercial claim.

Aeon Robotics wants to clean with hands

Just recently, an update of the robotics startup Aeon Robotics was given here. Aeon Robotics and the Institute of Robotics at the Technical University of Braunschweig are now researching the automation of cleaning and maintenance work with BMBF funding - the funding notice arrived these days. Here is the press release that suggests that it will be interesting and that Vorwerk will have to follow suit:

Braunschweig-based robotics startup Aeon Robotics, which was recently awarded the Lower Saxony Innovation Prize, and the Institute of Robotics and Process Informatics (IRP) at Braunschweig University of Technology are receiving a total of around EUR 700,000 in project funding for the automation of cleaning and maintenance tasks as part of the START-interaktiv funding program of the German Federal Ministry
for Education and Research (BMBF). As part of the three-year project, Aeon Robotics and the IRP want to enable service robots to learn building cleaning and maintenance tasks directly from humans for the first time. The funded project was selected as one of five from a total of 72 applications by the BMBF and the project management organization.

In the project, a robotic platform "AeonDroid" will be developed, which will have robotic hands and arms modeled on humans and based on the innovative HandEffector technology from Aeon Robotics. The system, equipped with a mobile robotic platform, will be intuitive to operate via hand control without programming knowledge. The robotic hands feature AI-assisted depth-sensitive force sense with direct force transmission to the human user. Thus, cleaning tasks can be controlled with force feedback and intuitively learned by demonstrating the task. The depth-sensitive force sense of the "AeonDroid" allows even deformable and sensitive objects, such as sponges and cleaning agents, to be safely gripped and moved, thus avoiding
damage to objects to be cleaned. Due to the high variability of the human models, the development of adapted force and movement primitives for this specific application has a considerable need for research, which is being worked on by the IRP of the TU Braunschweig around Prof. Dr. Jochen Steil in the joint project. For example, databases of gripping movements, gripping forces and workflows are to be created in order to recognize patterns within the movement sequences by means of neural networks and to independently adapt these for new utensils and work areas with AI support.
Project profile: https: //www.interaktive-technologien.de/projekte/aeondroid

Are we networking? LinkedIn
-> Go to the Cobot group on LinkedIn (link). The author is also a consultant (robotics, tech & finance). Hardly anyone is likely to have a comparable market overview.