Pasadena
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial d ...
, California
California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...
. It specialized in robotics
Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots.
Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...
technologies, with computer vision
Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...
, localization, and autonomous navigation products.
Evolution Robotics cooperated with Cambridge University for research in vision technology. Software products of Evolution Robotics were licensed by the Korean Institute of Industrial Technology and the Sony Robotics Division and were part of WowWee
WowWee Group Limited is a privately held, Hong Kong–based Canadian consumer technology company.
History
Initially from Canada, the two founding brothers (Richard and Peter Yanofsky) moved to Hong Kong to form the company in 1982, as an indepe ...
robots like ''Rovio''.
On September 17, 2012, iRobot acquired Evolution Robotics for $74 Million.
Products
In January 2010, Evolution Robotics released ''Mint'', a cleaning robot that dusted and wet-mopped hard surface floors. The robot's "wet mopping mode" had a coverage of 93 sq m (1000 sq ft) and 23 sq m (250 sq ft). The Mint lacked a vacuum motor and was one of the quietest floor-cleaning robots. The Mint was described as a "not fully autonomous robot"; hence, a cleaning cloth had to be attached to the cleaning pad before using it. The robot used an indoor navigation system called NorthStar for navigation. Mint used a navigation cube as a beacon for navigation, and the original model could only handle one of these beacons at a time.
On September 14, 2011, Evolution Robotics released a second model, ''Mint Plus''. The robot represented an improved version of the original Mint, supporting multiple NorthStar cubes simultaneously. An additional feature of the robot was the ability to continue work at the same spot if the machine was interrupted during cleaning. Mint Plus featured an automatic cleaning solution dispenser that kept the cloth wet during cleaning. One of the two Mint Plus robots had an installed docking station that functioned as a charging stand where the robot could be placed manually.
In 2013, Mint was rebranded as iRobot Braava.
References
External links
http://evolution.com/
− Website of Evolution Robotics (archived) {{DEFAULTSORT:Evolution Robotics Defunct robotics companies of the United States Defunct companies based in California Companies based in Pasadena, California IRobot