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

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!