This article considers the suitability of current robots designed to assist humans in accomplishing their daily domestic tasks. With several million units sold worldwide, robotic vacuum cleaners are currently the figurehead in this field. As such, we will use them to investigate the following key question: Could a robot possibly replace the hand-operated vacuum cleaner? One must consider not just how well a robot accomplishes its task, but also how well it integrates inside the user's space and perception. We took a holistic approach to addressing these topics by combining two studies in order to build a common ground. In the first of these studies, we analyzed a sample of seven robots to identify the influence of key technologies, like the navigation system, on performance. In the second study, we conducted an ethnographic study within nine households to identify users' needs. This innovative approach enables us to recommend a number of concrete improvements aimed at fulfilling users' needs by leveraging current technologies to reach new possibilities.

Abstract. The market of domestic service robots, and especially vacuum cleaners, has kept growing during the past decade. According to the International Federation of Robotics, more than one million units were sold worldwide in 2010. Currently, there is no in-depth analysis of the energetic impact of the introduction of this technology on the mass market. This topic is of prime importance in our energy-dependant society. This study aims at identifying key technologies leading to the reduction of the energy consumption of a domestic mobile robot, by exploring the design space using technologies issued from the robotic research field, such as the various localization and navigation strategies. This approach is validated through an in-depth analysis of seven vacuum-cleaning robots. These results are used to build a global assessment of the influential parameters. The major outcome is the assessment of the positive impact of both the ceiling-based visual localization and the laser-based localization approaches. MotivationThis study aims at analysing the impact of some research results on the energy consumption of mobile domestic robots, with a focus on localization and navigation. Such robots, and especially vacuum-cleaning robots, have become widespread. IRobot, one of the top companies on this market, claims to have sold six million units of its "Roomba" robot since the first release in 2002 [1]. In the present study, we analysed several domestic robots. They have been selected to represent the various technologies used today in robotics, and some of them include new features on the mass market, such as visual localization.The minimization of the energy consumption for such devices is an important and broad topic to be considered, especially for such a growing mass-market and within our energy-dependant society. A domestic robot should ideally be able to operate autonomously indoors, without having to connect to the power grid. This implies to embed the energy harvesters into the mobile robot or on a charging station, providing it with energy extracted directly from the surrounding environment, as previously discussed in [12]. The primary source of energy can be for example light, heat, or mechanical work produced by humans, or any combination of them. In any case, the available energy level is low and highly fluctuating, driving the need to spare energy at the level of the complete system. Therefore this paper presents an analysis of the performances of several existing products, assessing the impact of the embedded technologies on energy consumption. Working HypothesesThe total energy E total consumed by the system, expressed as a function of a set of generalized design parameters − → α , can be written as in Eq. 1, where η charger is the efficiency of the charging electronics, T task is the time needed to complete the task, and p robot (t) is the instantaneous power of the robot.In this study, we want to explore the design space − → α in order to minimize E total ( − → α ).This can be achieved by using two str...