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> what good can come out of it? Yes, you're paranoid. A drone doesn't need to map out a museum before lobbing a missile at it. An autonomous vacuum cleaner, on

> what good can come out of it? Yes, you're paranoid. A drone doesn't need to map out a museum before lobbing a missile at it. An autonomous vacuum cleaner, on the other hand, would probably love to know for sure that it has covered the entire surface. Personally, I'm imagining a little ball that I rent from the hardware store that rolls around my house for an hour and spits out the blueprints of my house so that I can feed it into a VR program for choosing furniture.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
That's what our company does already...kind of. Except we do it with an iPhone only and don't give you a scan yet - though we have proven we can build scans from videos. I won't spam the comment but we exist.
- jdormit 10y ago
  Can you link to your company's website? This sounds interesting.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    www.pair3d.com
m_eiman 10y ago
There's an app for that: http://locometric.com/ http://locometric.com/ I've tested it briefly, and it seems fairly accurate as long as you follow the instructions.
TFortunato 10y ago
Full disclosure: former iRobot engineer speaking - Coincidentally, for the latest Roomba (the 980), we did have a camera on the robot which did visual SLAM for precisely that purpose...the idea being it would map your house while it went, and if it needed to stop for a recharge, it can go back to its dock for a recharge, and then resume cleaning right where it left off. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541326/the-roomba-now-sees-and-maps-a-home/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541326/the-roomba-now-see... We also worked on a remote presence (teleconferencing) robot, which used SLAM to map the building it was in, so that a user could just click on a location on a map or schedule the robot to be in a conference room for a certain time, and the robot could autonomously drive there without someone remotely controlling it. It's a very cool technology that has a lot of really useful, non-scary, applications!
gh02t 10y ago
I mean I agree with you, but that's not to say there aren't military/defense applications. I know of a project that is using downward looking LIDAR imaging and SLAM to map out buildings and then combined with gamma radiation imaging to localize radiation sources within the scene. One of the intended uses is counter-terrorism.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

That's what our company does already...kind of. Except we do it with an iPhone only and don't give you a scan yet - though we have proven we can build scans from videos. I won't spam the comment but we exist.

jdormit 10y ago
Can you link to your company's website? This sounds interesting.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  www.pair3d.com

m_eiman 10y ago

There's an app for that: http://locometric.com/ http://locometric.com/ I've tested it briefly, and it seems fairly accurate as long as you follow the instructions.

TFortunato 10y ago

Full disclosure: former iRobot engineer speaking - Coincidentally, for the latest Roomba (the 980), we did have a camera on the robot which did visual SLAM for precisely that purpose...the idea being it would map your house while it went, and if it needed to stop for a recharge, it can go back to its dock for a recharge, and then resume cleaning right where it left off. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541326/the-roomba-now-sees-and-maps-a-home/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/541326/the-roomba-now-see... We also worked on a remote presence (teleconferencing) robot, which used SLAM to map the building it was in, so that a user could just click on a location on a map or schedule the robot to be in a conference room for a certain time, and the robot could autonomously drive there without someone remotely controlling it. It's a very cool technology that has a lot of really useful, non-scary, applications!

gh02t 10y ago

I mean I agree with you, but that's not to say there aren't military/defense applications. I know of a project that is using downward looking LIDAR imaging and SLAM to map out buildings and then combined with gamma radiation imaging to localize radiation sources within the scene. One of the intended uses is counter-terrorism.