August 7, 2005 Somewhere between a miniature hovercraft and a traditional vacuum cleaner, the AIRIDER has been nine years in development. While we’re not sure why it took so long, it is nonetheless a very good idea because one of the most difficult aspects of cleaning is dragging the vacuum around behind you and with a cushion of air making the machine frictionless, there’s no effort required to drag it around. Apart from floating an eighth of an inch off the floor, the bag-less design also reduces clogging and increases performance, with a claimed suction speed of 200 miles per hour.

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Now we could go on and on about this but we won’t. It’s really a normal modern bag-less vacuum cleaner that is totally frictionless – there’s a Windows video here that demonstrates the hovercraft part quite well. Priced at the premium end of the vacuum market at UK230 pounds, it’s a very cool, stylish vacuum cleaner that should remove some of the effort from vacuuming. That's inventor Mike Rooney in the pics.