Evolution Robotics Mint review

Submitted by Tibor on Wed, 2011-08-10 06:01

If you are like me, you've probably tried and than quickly sold iRobot Scooba 380. The first domestic floor washing robot was disappointing. Not only it bounced around cluelessly, but due to the old, not so smart logic, it got stuck quite often. Unfortunately, I could not sell the chores of floor cleaning along the robot, so I had to return cleaning the kitchen tiles for myself. But it’s over. Mint is here.

Introduction

Evolution Robotics, the maker of the Mint floor cleaner is a relatively small robot technology developer from south California. They provide a software development platform, visual pattern recognition systems and autonomous navigation technologies to those companies that wish to build their own utility robots. Mint, the automatic floor cleaning robot is the company’s only commercial product, mostly a demonstration of core technologies they provide. Mint was announced during CES 2010 in Las Vegas and went on sale in september, same year. In Europe Mint is sold as Dirt Devil Evo M678.

Evolution Robotics Mint cleaner with wet Swiffer cloth

Mint cleans hard surface floors by pushing a cloth around, but instead of running in a random pattern, it covers the floor in a systematic manner. When the cloth is dry, the robot works as a sweeper, while with wet cloth is more like a mopper. Due to the methodical cleaning style, it works only as much as needed, not a minute more. When done, Mint returns to the starting point.

Evolution Robotics Mint cleaner retail box

What’s in the box

Mint comes in a neat, mid size box. Compared to the robot itself, the box is rather large, but it’s not your regular boring box. The whole block opens into two separate sections. The robot is in the lower, smaller one, while the accessories are stored in the upper, larger section. The box itself is clever, although it is wasting a lot of space.

Evolution Robotics Mint box openedEvolution Robotics Mint user manualEvolution Robotics Mint in packaging

Mint robot
magnetic cleaning pad (on the bottom of the robot)
printed user manual (English, Spanish and French)
printed quick start guide (English only)
12V 250 mA power adaptor (US plug, but handles 100-240V and 50/60Hz, therefore suitable to use everywhere)
NorthStar navigation cube
2× C size batteries (non rechargeable)
set of cleaning cloths (2 for dry and 1 for wet cleaning)