According to an AP report out today, Hoover and Friendly Robotics have announced that they are working on the first robot vacuum cleaner. No doubt this will come as a suprise to quite a few people who have been building robot vacuum cleaners for years! (Not to mention contestants at the recently held Atlanta Robot Rally Vacuum Cleaner Robot Contest.) We reported on several commercial robot vacuum cleaners over a year ago including the Dyson DC06, Electrolux Eureka Robo Vac prototype (Electrolux also makes the claim of having made the first Robot Vacuum cleaner), and the Hollingsworth Floor Cleaning robot. There was also the Minolta Cleaning Robot and, of course, the Matsushita vacuum robot that was announced just last week. This earlier article indicates that the Hoover vacuum robot is a Friendly Robotics product that is being licensed to Hoover.