A new robot vacuum cleaner has been unveiled that could one day revolutionise the process of domestic cleaning.

The iRobot is a small circular machine that claims to be able to hoover an entire room, leaving householders to sit back and relax as the device gets to work.

According to Daily Mail journalist Vincent Graff, the iRobot can even be set to clean the living room while families are out, ensuring the floor is perfectly clean on their return.

The device uses an invisible beam to determine the dimensions of a room and avoid walls or objects and features a spot cleaning setting if users wish to focus on one small area.

However, Mr Graff said the iRobot is still some distance from being the perfect house cleaning device, often failing to clean corners and hard-to-reach places.

"If you want the middle of your living room spic-and-span without lifting a finger, it's your robot; if you want all of your living room clean, it's pretty useless," he wrote.

According to the manufacturer, some 2.5 million iRobot Roomba Vacuuming Robots have been sold across the world to date.

Posted by Toni Tsocheva