THE CHAMELEON
INTRODUCTION
My team and I were asked to work with the division of HOME APPLIANCES: with the most diversified product portfolios, Midea Group is the leading home appliance provider in the world, being expert in residential & commercial air conditioning, refrigeration, laundry appliances, large cooking appliances, kitchen appliances, water appliances, vacuum and small domestic appliances and lighting.
The given brief told us to design a system or one product with several accessories to be used for house cleaning. The product must have the basic function of dust removal from floor, but should be the core of a system of different, innovative functions around cleaning, involving also other type of surfaces or materials or contexts of use.
The final product could end up as a high-end or entry level product depending on scenarios deriving from the R&A phase and could then work for one or another of Midea’s brands.
The final product could end up as a high-end or entry level product depending on scenarios deriving from the R&A phase and could then work for one or another of Midea’s brands.
MODULARITY
The Chameleon was designed to fit our persona's ever changing needs in which ever phase of their life they were in. Its modularity is an effort from the team to make the whole product more sustainable as it would give the opportunity to replace or upgrade almost all of the parts. The modularity could be seen in two parts; The overall assembly of the product and the swappable heads.
Starting with the first part, the overall composition of the product could be seen in the exploded picture two pictures above. The part that is staying on the floor is called the AI head which has all of the AI components, battery, navigation sensor and wheels. Thus making it the brain of the whole product. Inside of the AI Head, we implemented a detachable battery in case it would need replacing and a speaker that is connected to the AI to have a siri like function.
The next part is the Triangular Body where it connects the various heads to the AI head. But it does not only connect them, it spins them around when needed. This removes the need of having multiple cleaning robots for different tasks as our robot can do everything automatically by just switching the different heads.
The last few components that makes the Chameleon are the various heads that can be swapped around depending on the user's needs. We offer five different heads which include a UV light, an air purifier, the vacuum itself, the toy collector, and a mop. All of these heads are connected via usb and are held together with magnets that are found inside the various heads and main body.
WHEELS
One of the biggest problems that we were told and later on also saw during our research was that the robot vacuum cleaners easily get stuck on various surfaces. That is why we researched and found out that having the tank like wheels were the more efficient option and with the added function of it dipping down to help it over certain obstacles or get it unstuck, make the Chameleon unstoppable.
