Why spend time vacuuming and dusting - when you could have an army of tiny flying robots clean your house for you! Well, you’ll still have to tidy up and do the dishes, but this futuristic MAB Automated Cleaning System could take care of all the dust and dirt. Columbian Adrian Perez Zapata's flying cleaning system recently won the grand prize in the 2013 Electrolux Design Lab Competition, which received 1,700 designs from students across 60 countries.
The ball-shaped shuttle acts as a base for hundreds of mini-robots that fly out to reach the farthest corners of the house, scan the entire space and start cleaning in a choreographed swarm-like play that can be both breathtaking and spooky. Each of the mini-robots has three points, while on the surface of the Mab, the mini-robots have their wings folded. Once they leave the base, the wings first act as propellers and then engage in a more complex flight mode similar to that used by RoboBees.
The tiny cleaners feature capsules filled with water and deposited into pills in a special compartment. Especially interesting, as long as the base functions properly, the cleaner can never break down. Damaged or malfunctioning flyers are easily replaced with new ones. It is not hard to imagine those being common supermarket items.
By winning the competition Adrian Perez Zapata was awarded 5,000 Euros and granted the opportunity to do a six-month paid internship at Electrolux.