A domestic robot, or service robot, is an autonomous robot that is used for household chores. Thus far, there are only a few limited models, though speculators, such as Bill Gates, have suggested that they could become more common in the future. Many domestic robots are used for basic household chores. Others are educational or entertainment robots, such as the HERO line of the 1980s. While most domestic robots are simplistic, some are connected to WiFi home networks or smart environments and are autonomous to a high degree. There were an estimated 3,540,000 service robots in use in 2006, compared with an estimated 950,000 industrial robots.
This type of domestic robot does chores around and inside homes. Different kinds include:
Robotic vacuum cleaners and floor-washing robots that clean floors with sweeping and wet mopping functions. Some use Swiffer or other disposable cleaning cloths to dry-sweep, or reusable microfiber cloths to wet-mop.
Dressman is a robot to iron shirts using hot air.
Kitchen robots, such as Somabar, are some of the most funded robots on Kickstarter.
Cat litter robots are automatic self-cleaning litter boxes that filter clumps out into a built-in waste receptacle that can be lined with an ordinary plastic bag.
Security robots which have a night-vision-capable wide-angle camera that detects movements and intruders. It can patrol places and shoot video of suspicious activities, too, and send alerts via email or text message; the stored history of past alerts and videos are accessible via the Web. The robot can also be configured to go into action at any time of the day.