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Home / News / Dyson 360 Eye is the all-seeing robotic vacuum cleaner you’ve been waiting for

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Dyson 360 Eye is the all-seeing robotic vacuum cleaner you’ve been waiting for

It's a tank-tracked autonomous drone of dust discovery and destruction

Fraser Macdonald

Help me, Dyson, I’m covered in dust!
That’s because you’ve been waiting so patiently (and lazily) for the company – this Jaguar of vacuum cleaners – to launch its robot vacuum cleaner. Something to rival the iRobot Roombas and the Neatos of this world. Well, wipe the accumulated Pop Tart crumbs from your eyes and pull the pet hair from your teeth. It’s here, and it looks more than a little tasty.

Uh, may I draw your attention to the fiercely burning Tealight of Hype?
You may. And you may observe as I extinguish it with the freezing Fingers of Fact. The Dyson lot have put a lot of hard graft into this. There are no fewer than 420 patents and patent applications associated with the Dyson 360 Eye. It’s been submitted to over 1000km of rolling road testing and it took 100,000 hours of software engineering to come up with its navigation system.

Alright, Norris McNumbers, let’s get physical.
What does it actually do? Pay attention, then: infrared sensors, naturally. But it also has an innovative 360-degree camera with which it correlates where it thought it was going to go with where it actually went. Propulsion comes not by wheels, which are prone to brain-scrambling slippage on rug boundaries, but compact tank tracks. It’ll dock and undock itself to charge when necessary, and it can be tracked or activated from afar using an iOS or Android app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6ReNFlxqJc

But how well does it execute its primary directive?
Oh, there’s plenty of space for a cat to sit on it. Wait, that’s the secondary directive – you mean clean. Positive signs there, also. Instead of using spinny brushes to direct dirt towards a mini-maw, the Dyson has a full-width dust-sucker. There’s one of Dysons oft-marketed consistently-sucky Cyclones on board and a reportedly efficient Digital Motor system too. Twenty minutes of no-fade go, they say. Like all robovacs, it’ll never entirely replace a Sunday morning spent sticking your nozzle in all the wee nooks and crannies. But for a decent daily dustbust, we’re more than excited about giving this one an audition. Though we wait, with dusty breath, for the price of the 360 Eye to be revealed…

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Profile image of Fraser Macdonald Fraser Macdonald consulting editor

About

Fraser used to wear a Psion Series 3 palmtop in a shoulder holster. Perhaps he still does.Either way, his lifelong mission - including fourteen years for Stuff - has been to see whether the consumer electronics industry can ever replicate that kind of cyborgian joy.So far: nope. Despite a plan to combine a action camera and Olympus Eye-Trek goggles to become Man Who Sees The Vision Of A Man Three Inches Taller Than Himself.He also likes mountain bikes, motorbikes, cars, helicopters. Still thinks virtual surround is witchcraft. Dislikes jetskis, despite never having been on one.