Evolution Robotics is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 company specializing in robotics

Robotics

Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...

 technologies from Pasadena

Pasadena, California

Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. The product range covers computer vision

Computer vision

Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...

, localization and autonomous navigation

Navigation research

Whereas originally the term Navigation applies to the process of directing a ship to a destination, Navigation research deals with fundamental aspects of navigation in general...

.

Evolution Robotics cooperates with Cambridge University for research in vision technology. Software products of Evolution Robotics are licensed by the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology and the Sony Robotics Division

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 and are part of WowWee robots like Rovio.

Products

In January 2010, Evolution Robotics released Mint (model number: 4200), a cleaning robot which dusts and wet-mops hard surface floors. The robot systematically covers the floor line-by-line and cleans around the edges before it returns to its original position. Mint is one of the most quiet floor cleaning robot (it has no vacuum motor), but it is not a fully autonomous robot. The cleaning cloth has to be attached to the cleaning pad before cleaning and it has to be removed after it is done. It can cover 93 sq m (1000 sq ft) mode and 23 sq m (250 sq ft) in wet mopping mode. Mint uses a navigation cube as a beacon for navigation, and the original model is only able to handle one of these beacons at a time. The indoor navigation system is called NorthStar®.

On September 14, 2011 Evolution Robotics announced the second model of the Mint family, called Mint Plus (model number: 5200). The black robot is essentially a slightly improved version of the original Mint, supporting more than one NorthStar® cubes at a time, and the ability to continue work at the same spot if the robot was interrupted during cleaning (for cleaning cloth change). Mint Plus also sports an automatic cleaning solution dispenser that keeps the cloth wet during cleaning, and one of the two versions come with a docking station. The docking station is a charging stand where the robot has to be placed manually.