Robotic vacuum cleaner
autonomous remote control vacuum floor cleaning system
A robotic vacuum cleaner, sometimes called a robovac, is a self-propelled vacuum cleaner which has sensors and robotic drives, programmable controllers, and cleaning routines. Early designs included manual operation via remote control and a "self-drive" mode which allowed the machine to clean autonomously.
History
In 1956, the American science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein described the concept of a robotic vacuum cleaner with a recharging dock in his novel The Door into Summer: "Basically it was just a better vacuum cleaner .... It went quietly looking for dirt all day long, in search curves that could miss nothing .... Around dinner time it would go to its stall and soak up a quick charge." The following year engineer Donald Moore filed a patent for robotic appliances, including a sweeper, that could follow a track laid below the floor. Whirlpool demonstrated the concept at the 1959 American National Exhibition but did not bring it to market.
In 1969 an episode of The Avengers was broadcast in which the character Inge Tilson played by Dora Reisser says "...I saw a demonstration once. A robot vacuum cleaner. It swept around the house, went back into its cupboard, automatically plugged in and recharged itself...". The teleplay for this episode which was entitled "Thingumajig" was written by Terry Nation.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Robotic vacuum cleaner” as autonomous remote control vacuum floor cleaning system. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q168577. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1959 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robotic vacuum cleaner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.