I guess if a robot is going to vacuum a carpet, it should be able to talk to the carpet. And that’s basically what this puppy can do – talk to the carpet via embedded RFID chips (just wait until they use inks and dyes to weave it in). From the Discovery Channel news website:

Now the manufacturing company Vorwerk in Hamlin, Germany, has partnered with Infineon in Munich to develop an electronic carpet that wirelessly navigates a self-propelled robot over every square inch of a floor, and can even direct the machine to revisit sections it unintentionally missed.

I assume the next rev will have the carpet complaining about dirty spots and directing the robot to specific locations to do a more thorough job.

My favorite part of this news item though is when Burcu Akinci, the “expert” that apparently was in the office to answer the phone that day, makes this insightful statement: “If the whole room gets flooded, then I think the robot wouldn’t be able to navigate easily.” Classic.

(As an aside, the generic topic of object-to-object communication is especially interesting in that this capability is very much a “virtual space” feature. Barriers just keep dropping between the real and the virtual.)

(above image Copyright © Vorwerk)