The Margin can exclusively report on next year's hot item for the wedding gift list. Swedish appliance maker AB Electrolux said it is working on a way to take the drudgery out of house cleaning the world's first self-operating vacuum cleaner.

The cylindrical machine, which took 10 years to develop, moves around a room using sound waves which alert it to an object in its path. When it senses one, it changes direction. Its brain is a microprocessor which has the same capacity as a personal computer.

In a demonstration on television, the vacuum cleaner was shown stopping in front of a champagne flute without knocking it over a very useful facility!