Pasadena
Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, 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 district.
Its ...
, California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
. It specialized in robotics
Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...
technologies with their product range covering computer vision
Computer vision is an Interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate t ...
, localization and autonomous navigation.
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
Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) is a South Korean government research institute, established in 1989 to help develop technologies for the domestic industry, with focus on export competitiveness and SMEs.
South Korea's then Minis ...
and the Sony Robotics Division and were part of WowWee
WowWee Group Limited, is a privately owned, 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 independ ...
robots like ''Rovio''.
On September 17, 2012 it was announced that Evolution Robotics was acquired by iRobot
iRobot Corporation is an American technology company that designs and builds consumer robots. It was founded in 1990 by three members of MIT's Artificial Intelligence Lab, who designed robots for space exploration and military defense. The com ...
for $74 Million.
Products
In January 2010, Evolution Robotics released ''Mint'', a cleaning robot which dusts and wet-mops hard surface floors. The robot's "wet mopping mode" has a coverage of 93 sq m (1000 sq ft) and 23 sq m (250 sq ft). The Mint lacks a vacuum motor and is one of the quietest floor cleaning robots. The Mint was described as a "not fully autonomous robot" hence a cleaning cloth has to be attached to the cleaning pad before using it. For navigation, the robot uses an indoor navigation system called NorthStar. Mint used a navigation cube as a beacon for navigation, and the original model was only able to handle one of these beacons at a time.
On September 14, 2011, Evolution Robotics announced the second model of the Mint family, called ''Mint Plus''. The robot represents an improved version of the original Mint, supporting multiple NorthStar cubes at a time. An additional feature of the new robot is the ability to continue work at the same spot if the machine is interrupted during cleaning. Mint Plus features an automatic cleaning solution dispenser that keeps the cloth wet during cleaning. One of the two Mint Plus robots has an installed docking station that has a function of a charging stand where the robot can be placed manually.
In 2013, Evolution Robotics 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 Information technology companies of the United States Defunct companies based in California Companies based in Pasadena, California