iRobot's Braava jet mops the floor, then drops its dirty pad into the bin

Once the cleaning is done, you do not have to touch the dirty pad. You just hold the robot over a bin and press an eject button to drop it in, iRobot explains.

The robot works with dedicated pads. According to the manufacturer, it can wet mop, damp sweep or simply dust, and it chooses its own cleaning mode depending on the pad fitted.

To keep it out of a room with no door, or off a rug, the user can draw an invisible boundary with a mode called “Virtual Wall”.

The company presents the robot as a complement to its Roomba vacuum cleaner. Christian Cerda, one of its executives, claims more than 15 million home robots sold worldwide.