Xiaomi is adding one more product to its smart home ecosystem in India. This time it is bringing a ‘smart’ vacuum cleaner to the Indian market that can ‘intelligently’ sweep and mop the floor for you using Wi-Fi and Xiaomi’s Mi Home app. Xiaomi’s smart vacuum cleaner is called the Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P and it will be available on Mi.com from April 17 at an introductory price of Rs 17,999. Much like many other Xiaomi ecosystem products, the Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P will also be sold through crowdfunding, but more on that later.
Xiaomi says its smart vacuum cleaner has 12 different multi-directional sensors and uses Laser Distance Sensor (LDS) for navigation to scan ‘complex’ environments accurately and avoid obstacles while cleaning. All this tech means the Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P can scan your room in 360-degree with an 8-meter range up to six times per second and an accuracy deviation of less than 2 percent. Its slim and compact design meanwhile ensures it can clear narrow spaces fairly efficiently too.
Xiaomi’s smart vacuum cleaner comes with two cleaning modes, sweeping and mopping, and sweeping only. It comes with a 550 ml dust box and an electronically controlled water tank with three gears of water for different floor materials — the smart vacuum cleaner will know when it runs out of water, and will automatically become immobile, according to Xiaomi.
The smart vacuum cleaner is backed by a 3,200mAh battery which is claimed to offer up to 110 minutes of cleaning. There’s Wi-Fi built into it, so it can connect to Xiaomi’s Mi Home app — which will then act as a control center for controlling, scheduling, and viewing the virtual map that the vacuum cleaner sees.
Coming to the crowdfunding bit, what this basically means is that you can’t readily buy the Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P in India just yet. You can only order it for now. Since it’s part of Xiaomi’s crowdfunding platform, the product will require to meet a certain ‘interest’ goal to achieve the status of ‘ready to buy.’ In the case of Xiaomi’s smart vacuum cleaner, the goal is to reach 10,000 units in four weeks. This means 10,000 people (or more) will need to show interest or pre-order the smart vacuum cleaner for Xiaomi to further develop it and ship it to buyers. Xiaomi says the Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P will be ready to ship by September 15 — provided if enough buyers show interest. Xiaomi is taking a longer time to ship the product, in comparison to some of its other ecosystem products, because it needs time to customize it for the Indian market plus receive BIS certification.
