Robotic Pool Cleaners

The joys of summer - barbeques, having the family over on long, hot Sunday afternoons, swimming! Not a joy of summer - cleaning your pool.

While a pool is something many home-owners would love to have, one thing they can do without is the hassle of cleaning a pool. That's where robotic pool cleaners come in.

Robotic pool cleaners are the next step from pool vacuum cleaners. Way back in 1974, Ferdinand Chauvier released the world's very first pool vacuum cleaner. He invented this after discovering a need among South African pool-owners, following his move to South Africa in 1951.

There are four main types of pool cleaners, namely; return-side driven, pressure driven, suction-side driven and electronic, or robotic.

Robotic pool cleaners are fast becoming popular in residential as well as commercial swimming pools all over the world. These pool cleaners are self-contained and are simply placed in the pool when it needs to be cleaned. Robotic pool cleaners are the only cleaners not even connected to the pools filtration system. This means there is no resistance or back-pressure on the system. It can be thought of a second filtration system within the pool.

Robot pool cleaners are both mechanical and electronic devices that are used for cleaning the surface of the swimming pool. They are designed to clean loose debris and dust off the pool surface. Usually, robotic pool cleaners just clean the bottom of the pool surface - i.e. the floor, but some cleaners also clean the pool walls. The robotic pool cleaner has quite a lot of coverage.

Robotic pool cleaners are designed around a very simple concept. There are three main parts to a robotic pool cleaner. There is a drive motor, a pump, and a processor. The intake valves are located at the bottom of the robotic pool cleaner. The water is drawn up from the intake valves by the pump. The water goes through the filter and out the top outlet. The debris from the pool's surface, after being vacuumed up into the filter, stays in the filter until the cycle is completed. Once the cycle is completed, the filter can be emptied out. The robotic pool cleaner's self-contained filter is very easily cleaned.

The drive motor gives the robotic pool cleaner its directional movement, but does not tell the robot where to go. It gets the wheels turning so the cleaner can move along the pool floor.

The microprocessor determines the pool cleaner's cycle time and the direction to go in the pool. Some of the more advanced models of robotic pool cleaners 'remember' the pool's size and shape. The pool cleaner uses this information to determine the most efficient route to clean the pool. Most models of robotic pool cleaners use a random pattern when cleaning the pool floor. This is to ensure that the entire pool floor will eventually be covered. There are some cleaners controlled by computer chips, or even remote controls.