Flickr / CC-licensed: nobihaya

On the importance of incorporating next-generation R&D into products

Wired: What do you think about the Roomba?

I don't like to talk about what our competitors are doing, but I can tell you what we're doing [with robotic vacuum cleaners], and you can infer what we think about the Roomba. We want ours to navigate properly. And also to clean properly. It is a vacuum cleaner; it has to clean, and not just tickle the surface. We've been quite ambitious with what we're doing, which is why it's taken quite a long time. We've been hiring roboticists and working on it for 12 years.

The easiest way [to solve the navigation problem] is to make it random. It's dead easy, and so that's what they've all done so far. But then when you start actually navigating, there are various degrees of success. Rooms are all very different; they have different shapes and different surfaces…. Random machines have various efficiencies at covering the room. It might cover only 70% of it. If you do a square, it might cover 90 percent. But the moment you've got a proper room with furniture in it, you get into big trouble.

And you've got to do it efficiently. You see, if you're going to vacuum properly, you've got to use a huge amount of power. If you use a huge amount of power, you can't do it for very long, because you haven't got enough battery life. So therefore, your navigation has got to be very efficient.

We're writing the software for the IEC that measures the efficiency of a vacuum-cleaning robot that goes across the floor. There are a lot of shenanigans, as you can imagine, about how do you measure the efficiency of robots and how you measure the cleaning efficiency of vacuums.

Wired: Could you talk about your battery development?

Dyson: Well, I can't tell you the secret of it. [laughter]

I can talk in generalities. I think all of the new developments are much more environmental. Carbon nanotube technologies, these sorts of things that will make batteries better.

We actually have a different requirement for batteries than most people. In [laptops] and in cars, you want batteries to last a long time with a small power draw. We're at the opposite end of the scale. We have a massive power draw in a short space of time. Something like a capacitor is a much better technology for us than a battery.
So we've realised than in order to get the batteries we want, we have to develop them ourselves.

Wired: Improving all sorts of batteries?

Dyson: Yes, lots of people are doing that anyway. Manufacturing is tricky. But there's a lot of very intelligent people working on it.

We see what's going on. On the whole it doesn't affect what we do because it's so different. But we look at almost every technology that's going on, being announced, that we can see on the Internet.

I don't often do it personally. We have scouts that do it. And just occasionally there's something with a bit of interest. For example, bearing-less bearings - air bearings - have always interested us. They're jolly good for lots of applications, but unfortunately they don't work in ours, We're constantly stopping and starting, and you can't really do that with air bearings.

Our motor there is 110,000 rpm. It's a terrifying speed. You know, jet engines go at 17,000, and a Ferrari racing engine is about 19,000, and basically your average vacuum cleaner motor is about 30,000. We're up at 110,000. If you go slightly off-balance, you hit a lateral force of about 40 tons, so it's a tricky area to work in.

Wired: It sounds like designing vacuum cleaners can be as difficult as designing an aircraft or rocket engine.

Dyson: Yes, because you have to go through the same basic problems, but we have to do it for less money. And we have to produce millions of them, and every one has to be perfect.


Latest on wired.co.uk