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The past isn't exactly an indicator of the future, though. Competition like Roborock's vacuums are laden with cameras and can do full object categorization, inc
by owenwil 4y ago
The past isn't exactly an indicator of the future, though. Competition like Roborock's vacuums are laden with cameras and can do full object categorization, including furniture type and layout, but also what's lying around anywhere up to waist height. Mine has detected shoes, cables, power strips, pets, clothes, toys and so on–that is pretty useful data and tells you A LOT about the house and its owner–pretty easy to imagine them eventually detecting the brand of the shoe and how worn it is or something.
If Roomba isn't working on something like this, given the competition is clearly much further ahead, I'd be completely surprised.
- henryfjordan 4y agoOther posters have pointed out that newer high-end $1000 Roombas do have cameras and some of those features you mention, but they make up a small portion of the Roomba fleet. The article is suggesting Amazon bought iRobot for access to that tiny amount of data. There's just no way that's the primary motivator. It makes so much more sense to think about this acquisition from the "consolidating household smart-device offerings under the Alexa brand" perspective.
- owenwil 4y agoI don't disagree, but I see it as more of a forward-looking acquisition, not a backwards looking one. Sure, they don't have the data now but It's easy to imagine Amazon killing off the old basic models in the future and selling the data-gathering camera-enabled ones at a loss, to kill off the competition and get much larger market share, once it's acquired the company. Why wouldn't they?