Readybot, the Kitchen Robot

Today the Readybot Robot Challenge unveiled a preview of a prototype of their new kitchen-cleaning robot.  The Readybot Challenge is a non-profit club, composed of senior engineers and designers from the networking, motion control, ergonomics, and software industries. Their mission is to build a robot that can clean a kitchen. “People ask what will be the breakthrough application for consumer robotics,” comments Tom Benson, team leader, “we think people want a robot that can clean the kitchen.” Yes, he’s right about that!  We hear that request more than anything.

Readybot currently can do about 30-40% of the common daily kitchen cleaning tasks, with the goal of achieving 50% in the next year and topping out at 80%. “Common daily tasks” are defined as things that happen every day, like loading the dishwasher and cleaning the counter. Admittedly, some things will simply require more dexterity than the Readybot has, but 30-80% is nothing to complain about. Check out the video at the bottom of this article to see it in action.

The kitchen helper deploys several antenna-like cameras and assumes a human height for working.  It’s not fast, but it does just keep on chugging until it gets the work done.

Although Readybot is designed for mass-production, but it is still just a prototype and not ready sale. They estimate it would take about two years to create a shippable product if the right technology firm applied a solid engineering and design team to the project.