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Mint Automatic Floor Cleaner

Lead Designers
Prize(s)Gold in Media And Home Electronics / Robotics
Project LinkView
Entry Description

Mint is the first of its kind automatic floor-cleaning appliance to utilize technology similar to GPS to clean your home. This allows a hands-free and worry-free cleaning experience. Unlike many other robotic and manual cleaning devices, Mint is designed to integrate into the home environment. The design of these products typically does not take into consideration how it would fit into a family’s décor, or more specifically, how it reflects the sense of beauty and pride many mothers and wives take in their environment. Mint is designed to be seen instead of used and put away. It appeals to the core female audience by breaking from the cliché of tech-heavy design typically associated with this category.
Mint uses the NorthStar® System, which works like an indoor GPS. Mint starts by cleaning open areas, moving methodically back and forth across your floor. It then follows with a perimeter sweep along the edges of furniture and walls for a complete clean. When Mint is finished cleaning, it returns to where it started and parks itself so you know right where to find it. Mint’s compact square shape cleans into tight corners, all the way to edges, under furniture and hard to reach areas. With PerfectEdge™ technology, Mint is systematically able to find the edges in a room and follow them until the corners, where it will then change course. This way, it can pick up dirt that is swept into corners and often easily overlooked; this ensures the entirety of the room is cleaned equally well.
Convenience and simplicity is core to Mint. The product has only 3 single function buttons to control the UI. Cloths are easily attached to a removable cleaning pad, which snaps back into place magnetically. Once the cloth is attached, Mint is a one-button operation: place it on the floor and press start. Guided by NorthStar® technology, Mint cleans systematically, tracking where it cleans.


The overall challenge for Mint was to envision and design a transformative floor-cleaning experience that fits beautifully into a home’s décor while leveraging aerospace-grade technology. This device is specifically tailored to deliver consumers an appliance that could clean better than they could, while providing a hassle-free experience. The high cost and perceived complexity of robotic cleaning solutions has often discouraged widespread adoption, particularly with middle-income mothers. In this relatively new category (robots), which consumers don’t fully trust or understand, the new Mint brand and appliance expresses and delivers on a simple, accessible solution. Mint simulates the ease of manual cleaning like vacuuming but demonstrates the thoroughness many wives and mothers put into keeping their homes clean.

An integration of iconic design and innovative technology, the Mint automatic floor cleaner ensures hassle-free cleaning while being a beautiful presence in any home.