Travel-friendly robot cleans your hotel bed with artificial intelligence

Technophile travellers could soon be inviting robots between the sheets, as this portable bed-cleaning automaton goes on sale.

The CleanseBot is a travel-size cleaning robot designed to disinfect your hotel bed.
Even in the shiniest of hotel suites a wide variety of bacteria could be lurking.

The transient occupancy of hotel accommodation means that around 81 per cent of surfaces are found to contain harmful bacteria, as horrified researchers from the University of Houston discovered.

Germaphobes rejoice: you can now check in with confidence, thanks to this nifty little device.

The robot uses UV light to scour surfaces – including bed sheets – without the need for harmful chemicals or manual labour. This method is found to be effective against 99.9 per cent of pathogens tucked away in the fabric of hotel suites.

Weighing just 220 grams, the futuristic robot gets to work cleaning your room at the touch of a button.

While CleanseBot is capable of autonomously wheeling itself round like some OCD powered pet, it can also be handheld and applied to more difficult areas such as bathroom fixtures and remote controllers.

Perhaps most spectacular is the 'under the blanket mode', as the UV light-up robot ferrets about cleaning under your duvet without you having to unmake your bed.

More than a robotic travel cleaner, the CleanseBot can also double up as a power bank - allowing travellers to recharge phones, for germaphobic travellers on the go.

Designers Ventur Studio, who are based out of the US, said that the robot can clean a full sized hotel suite in between 30-60 minutes and operate six times on one charge.

There's plenty of interest in the device. As a crowdfunded design project it had over US$1m pledged from nearly 11,000 backers via the website KickStarter.com.

However, cleanliness doesn't come cheap with units retailing at a planned price of US$260 ($380).

The robotic travel companions are expected to ship out in early April, with discounts for pre-orders placed via their KickStarter page.