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Charmin Created a Robot That Brings You Toilet Paper When You Run Out

Megan Johnson
Megan Johnson
Megan Johnson is a reporter in Boston. She got her start at the Boston Herald, where commenters would leave sweet messages like “Megan Johnson is just awful.” Now, she's a contributor to publications like People Magazine, Trulia and Architectural Digest.
published Jan 8, 2020
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The robots are coming… and they’re bringing toilet paper.

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, tens of thousands of conventioneers came together to explore what’s coming around the bend in technology. And apparently, that includes the Charmin RollBot, a self-balancing robot on wheels that delivers toilet paper to you, the unlucky TP-deprived toilet user.

“So you’re on the commode, you look over, oh no, somebody didn’t change the roll. Hello? Nobody home,” Gregg Weaver of Procter & Gamble told NPR. That’s you’re supposed to whip out your cellphone, and summon the RollBot via Bluetooth.

It “delivers a fresh roll of Charmin, saves the day,” Weaver says.

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Credit: Courtesy of P&G

Unfortunately, the “poop time robot pal” as it was referred to by CNET, isn’t something that will ever hit the market.  According to NPR, the RollBot is “just a concept,” so chances are your days of yelling “hey can you throw me a roll of TP?” to your roommate are not over.

However, the RollBot wasn’t the only creation the smooth-bottomed tech experts at Charmin came up with for CES. They also created the SmellSense, a sensor that is calibrated to detect carbon dioxide. (Translation: it detects whether a bathroom smells horrible.) According to Digital Trends, the SmellSense displays “go” or “no go” sign to let you know whether a bathroom is safe for you to enter, without having to administer the ol’ olfactory test to find out. Think of it like a stoplight, but for toilets.

One person who won’t be testing out the RollBot, however, is Stephen Colbert. “The Late Show” host did a bit about CES’ inventions, and echoed the sentiments of many of us, who prefer to just have our alone time in the john.

“No offense, Charmin, I’m sure the robot’s great and all, but ‘pooptime’ is the one time I don’t want a pal,” Colbert told the camera.  

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