Sir James Dyson, one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs and the name behind famous vacuum cleaners, now plans to create affordable house robots that will revolutionise domestic chores.
His engineering company is to invest 5 million pounds in a robotics lab at Imperial College, London. The research will focus on vision systems that can help robots understand and adapt to the world around them, the company said.
Dyson has been working on robotics with Imperial's Prof Andrew Davison since 2005, and he will run the new lab. The research will cover domestic robots as well as robotic vacuum cleaners.
"My generation believed the world would be overrun by robots by the year 2014. We now have the mechanical and electronic capabilities, but robots still lack understanding - seeing and thinking in the way we do. Mastering this will make our lives easier and lead to previously unthinkable technologies," Dyson said.
He believes his company's expertise in producing small, powerful motors and his work on electronic navigation systems means he could develop a mass-selling housework robot.
He is competing against Japanese to be the first to build an advanced generation of household androids. Artificial intelligence means that the robots will be almost autonomous.
"You will send up a robot to clean windows. It will know where it is going. It will know how to clean the windows. And it will know when it is finished," he said.
The entrepreneur said his company was "nearly there" in producing its own robotic vacuum cleaner which would have good navigation and good suction.
