This robot is called "WinBoni" and like its namesake, actually cleans your windows the way a Zamboni would clean your favorite ice rink. The project won first prize in the International Student Design Competition held by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers so it wins for a feat of anti-gravitational genius. Watch the video to see it in action.

via DVice

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The Winboni is the first place winner in the International Student Design Competition of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Winboni is a small robot that cleans windows. That alone doesn’t set the robot apart. The fact that it is held on by suction is what distinguishes it. Running off AA batteries, this robot clings to the window as it cleans it with felt pads. It is hard to believe that this isn’t already a commercial product. Actually, we thought we had even seen it before, but we can’t find it now.

[via DVICE]

      

centerembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1kchwH-3tY0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1" width="425" height="344" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"/embed/centerbr / pWhat happens when you cross a Roomba and a Zamboni? Well, chances are you'd get this - the "Winboni" window washing machine that is the brainchild of a brilliant quartet of students from MSU, snagging first place in the International Student Design Competition of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. A single push of a button will let the Winboni get to work automatically on your windows, relying on a suction fan to help it fight against gravity while Windex and felt pads are used for clearing up any bird poop and dirt. The union of window washers will probably have something to say against this, since those folks might be out of a job when the Winboni gets refined - might take many more years though./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/winboni_hybrid_washes_windows.html"Winboni Hybrid Washes Windows/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"Storm Review/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081203184643" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081203184643?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081203184643" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081203184643amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fwinboni_hybrid_washes_windows.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nOf5aRX4Q0aKrLT1Rd1sqZamx2M/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nOf5aRX4Q0aKrLT1Rd1sqZamx2M/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=R8LKW2YL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=NMGjAbOC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=NMGjAbOC" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=LOiglVBs"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=svtRyUCA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=svtRyUCA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=fK6mvFCk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=fK6mvFCk" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/fNyB2G6ToNM" height="1" width="1"/