If you weren’t blessed with a naturally green thumb, you may have given up on your home with live plants long ago. Let’s face it, trying to keep up with watering and time in the sun is a futile mission. But now there’s a nifty bit of technology that could bring life — plant life — back into your home to stay.
Vincross created Hexa, a personal robot gardener that looks like a high-tech insect. The robot makes caring for your indoor plants a breeze. It holds one little succulent plant and dedicates all its time to keeping it properly sunned.
It roams around your home in search of sun or shade, whatever the plant needs most. When it does settle in the sun, it can fully rotate to allow for even ray distribution on every single leaf.
And that’s not all. The robot also does a little dance to alert you whenever the plant under its care needs water. How genius is that?
How The Robot Came To Be
Originally, the robot was a multipurpose invention. It has six sturdy legs to carry it around, and it could conceivably do a multitude of different tasks. However, inspired by the passive plight of plants, the CEO and creator Tianqi Sun dedicated it to their care and wellbeing.
Hexa can navigate in all directions and around any obstacles in its path. It’s even nimble enough to navigate unexpected drops, like if it had to suddenly step over a gap between two tabletops. It relies on an infrared sensor, a distance sensor and a 720-pixel camera complete with night vision.
All of these combine to keep it and its plant out of harm’s way and maneuvering around your home.
Additionally, the robot features include built-in WiFi and USB ports that add to its versatility.
All that high-tech assistance doesn’t come cheap. Hexa costs around $950. But that’s a pretty reasonable price to pay for an instant green thumb, in my opinion.
Robot Cleans Your Hotel Room
In other genius robot news, there’s now a robot that helps travelers tackle a problem many may not even realize they should consider.
While many hotels maintain superior cleanliness standards, not all undertake the disinfection process you’d execute in your own home. Even regular and careful cleaning can leave germs behind on various hotel room surfaces.
But now there’s a new way to give any hotel room an instant and effective cleanup.
Robot On The Road
It’s called a CleanseBot, and it’s a patent-pending disinfecting robot that packs super sanitizing technology into a pocket-sized device. It features a UV-C light to disinfect and sanitize. The light helps to prevent the spread of airborne viruses and more. In fact, according to an independently conducted study, the CleanseBot killed 99.99 percent of E. coli.
Learn more in the video below, from the CleanseBot Kickstarter campaign:
Surface Study
Think that lugging a tiny, disinfecting robot with you on all of your travels is a bit much? There are a lot more germs lurking around hotel rooms than you think.
Researchers from Purdue University and the University of South Carolina sampled a wide variety of surfaces in multiple hotel rooms in Texas, Indiana and South Carolina. What they discovered was bacteria — and a lot of it.
You’re most likely to find germs — including fecal bacteria and other illness-causing bacteria — on bathroom sinks and floors, light switches and TV remote controls.
Try spending a night in a hotel room without coming into contact with any of those surfaces!
Get Your Own Bot
Finally convinced it’s worthwhile to carry a cleansing robot around on your vacations? You’re not the only one. The device moved from Kickstarter to Indiegogo on Jan. 6. Since then, the company has raised more than $1.3 million. It blew away its initial goal thanks to eager buyers.
Don’t delay. There’s still availability for early backers. While it’s still in its prototype phase, you can buy the device at a discounted price of $99. That’s a steep discount off the full price of $259. The device itself will become available later this year.
This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Checkout Simplemost for other great tips and ideas to make the most out of life.
