4 ms·

Looks to me like they want to get in on 3D mapping homes that haven't already been mapped by a Roomba or other similar bot. There is plenty of money to be made

Looks to me like they want to get in on 3D mapping homes that haven't already been mapped by a Roomba or other similar bot. There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police. At the same time the customer's home is being cleaned, all objects can be scanned to data-mine the customer's shopping preferences. Maybe training AI and bots is part of what they're trying to accomplish, but I just can't help wonder what else they are trying to do. I am extremely suspicious of any tech companies that make it seem like a great idea to let their tech in my house. I can't imagine what is going to happen when, if this company ever really develops cleaning bots, their bots misidentify something as a weapon or drug stash and automatically dial the police. Or one of their bots gets remotely hacked by a vengeful person who then triggers the bot to call in a SWAT team. Also, if this kind of labor is the "unskilled" labor that we've all heard of (or have been told is "unskilled"), AI systems shouldn't need any training for it ;)

petesergeant 4mo ago
This sounds like a decent deal for the segment of customers who are happy to have their shopping preferences mapped (which seems to be almost all) and don’t care if a 3rd party has their home layout.
- Ylpertnodi 4mo ago
  My home layout was approved by the local council, and is freely available for anyone to see. I get personal belongings, but who cares about home layout?
  - Broken_Hippo 4mo ago
    You are conflicting room layout to home layout. In genreal, blueprints or something similar are available. Where your bed, sofa, and tables are located isn't.
    - Ylpertnodi 4mo ago
      "Abort! Abort! The bastard is painting. He's moved the sofa."
      - ifh-hn 4mo ago
        Haha, yeah. Exactly my thoughts.
zamadatix 4mo ago
Yeah, definitely. On one hand it's obvious such companies will want this data precisely to make their systems work. On the other hand... once they have the data, we all know it also ends up wherever someone is willing to pay for it. Even if they say it's not the goal today... 10 years from now how do you know the owner of the data at that point will feel the same way? Doubly so since they don't seem to be making any privacy guarantees around the pricing, just attempts at anonymizing the high level things. I find it interesting how many people get worked up about the "skilled/unskilled" terminology though. Just walking to arbitrary waypoints is an extraordinary feet in itself - if you dropped me in the past and told me to build something which walks (or even just traverses) as such I would likely not achieve it in my lifetime, despite having great insight into how we've already accomplished this goal. At the same time, people know listing "mastered the ability to walk as a child, proficient in running" in the skills section of their resume does not make sense. It seems easy enough to understand the difference in meaning between the two contexts (skills an average human is expected to have over, say, a rock vs skills which differentiate one as able to start a job without waiting for several years of additional development) rather than seek to pick the least relevant interpretation. OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in (and not just for the "high end" version of the job). That's definitely a misclassification, but not for something like cleaning homes where the average person is expected to be able to do it themselves.
- ndsipa_pomu 4mo ago
  > OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in Isn't the barrier to entry due to the jobs not allowing for mistakes? Cleaning has a high tolerance for mistakes (e.g. missing bits, leaving streaks on windows etc) and so it's fine for an inexperienced cleaner to learn from their mistakes whilst doing the job. However, people would not be happy for a lawyer or surgeon to be learning from their mistakes whilst working - they are expected to already be competent and mistakes are generally very damaging.
  - 4mo ago
matthewmacleod 4mo ago
There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police Is there?
- Michelangelo11 4mo ago
  Came here to post exactly this. Is there, really?
  - sjbzbeiks 4mo ago
    I would guess so, they seem interested in the ring cameras https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/09/30/ring-police-partnerships https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/09/30/ring-police-partn...
    - IanCal 4mo ago
      The cost of sharing recordings of video you collect anyway is near 0, and this provides videos of public places. What's the value of a recording inside my house to the police? That requires paying a human to go around recording it?
      - wizzwizz4 4mo ago
        The cost of sharing recordings of video you collect anyway is near 0. If not police, many stalkers would definitely appreciate this information.
      - Geezus_42 4mo ago
        Even if my neighborhood is a public place, I don't agree that most public places should have 24hr video surveillance.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- toasty228 4mo ago
  They'd save money if they knew exactly which spot of the wall to shoot through to kill the innocent sleeping person next door, that's at least a few dollars a week in bullets alone.
drbojingle 4mo ago
If the service is free, the product is you.
jiaosdjf 4mo ago
The Stasi would blush
dawnerd 4mo ago
Insurance companies too. They were one of the first ones to map out in detail building plans for entire cities.
_bypa 4mo ago
> There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police. Perhaps more to thieves who can make sure they break into a place worth raiding.
- jMyles 4mo ago
  No reason to reprhase-and-repeat.
bragr 4mo ago
>There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police. The police basically already have this in the form of building records. Unless you live in a really old building or you've made unapproved modifications, they've got an accurate layout if they care to look.
- jjulius 4mo ago
  There's nuance, though. You're right in that they can get a general layout of the rooms in the home, but a mapped layout from a device like this gives them a lot more detailed information - where large objects are that potential targets could hide behind, or stash things. One data point offers a drawing of where the walls are, another paints a picture of where everything the occupant owns is sitting.
  - bragr 4mo ago
    There is some nuance, but in real life the SWAT teams will just crash a bearcat through the wall and fly a cheap drone through the hole to scope out the situation if need be. And as for searching, they don't need a scan to know how to upend everything in a house. People aren't robots, once they're inside, they have their own situational awareness. The real privacy nightmare with this data to me is marketers mining it for what you have or don't have in your home and hyper targeting you that you need to buy a new coffee table or whatever.
    - jjulius 4mo ago
      > ... fly a cheap drone through the hole... Until someone inside shoots it. Much easier to just grab data from yesterday's cleaning. But perhaps I'm overthinking that? I do tend to lean into the idea that SWAT seem to be more of the Leroy Jenkins, times-up-let's-do-this, smash-and-grab types. > The real privacy nightmare with this data to me... Oh absolutely, totally agree there.

petesergeant 4mo ago

This sounds like a decent deal for the segment of customers who are happy to have their shopping preferences mapped (which seems to be almost all) and don’t care if a 3rd party has their home layout.

Ylpertnodi 4mo ago
My home layout was approved by the local council, and is freely available for anyone to see. I get personal belongings, but who cares about home layout?
- Broken_Hippo 4mo ago
  You are conflicting room layout to home layout. In genreal, blueprints or something similar are available. Where your bed, sofa, and tables are located isn't.
  - Ylpertnodi 4mo ago
    "Abort! Abort! The bastard is painting. He's moved the sofa."
    - ifh-hn 4mo ago
      Haha, yeah. Exactly my thoughts.

zamadatix 4mo ago

Yeah, definitely. On one hand it's obvious such companies will want this data precisely to make their systems work. On the other hand... once they have the data, we all know it also ends up wherever someone is willing to pay for it. Even if they say it's not the goal today... 10 years from now how do you know the owner of the data at that point will feel the same way? Doubly so since they don't seem to be making any privacy guarantees around the pricing, just attempts at anonymizing the high level things. I find it interesting how many people get worked up about the "skilled/unskilled" terminology though. Just walking to arbitrary waypoints is an extraordinary feet in itself - if you dropped me in the past and told me to build something which walks (or even just traverses) as such I would likely not achieve it in my lifetime, despite having great insight into how we've already accomplished this goal. At the same time, people know listing "mastered the ability to walk as a child, proficient in running" in the skills section of their resume does not make sense. It seems easy enough to understand the difference in meaning between the two contexts (skills an average human is expected to have over, say, a rock vs skills which differentiate one as able to start a job without waiting for several years of additional development) rather than seek to pick the least relevant interpretation. OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in (and not just for the "high end" version of the job). That's definitely a misclassification, but not for something like cleaning homes where the average person is expected to be able to do it themselves.

ndsipa_pomu 4mo ago
> OTOH, there are definitely jobs which get conflated as having a low barrier to entry (for the average person) but actually take many years of training to be able to get a typical job in Isn't the barrier to entry due to the jobs not allowing for mistakes? Cleaning has a high tolerance for mistakes (e.g. missing bits, leaving streaks on windows etc) and so it's fine for an inexperienced cleaner to learn from their mistakes whilst doing the job. However, people would not be happy for a lawyer or surgeon to be learning from their mistakes whilst working - they are expected to already be competent and mistakes are generally very damaging.
- 4mo ago

matthewmacleod 4mo ago

There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police Is there?

Michelangelo11 4mo ago
Came here to post exactly this. Is there, really?
- sjbzbeiks 4mo ago
  I would guess so, they seem interested in the ring cameras https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/09/30/ring-police-partnerships https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/09/30/ring-police-partn...
  - IanCal 4mo ago
    The cost of sharing recordings of video you collect anyway is near 0, and this provides videos of public places. What's the value of a recording inside my house to the police? That requires paying a human to go around recording it?
    - wizzwizz4 4mo ago
      The cost of sharing recordings of video you collect anyway is near 0. If not police, many stalkers would definitely appreciate this information.
    - Geezus_42 4mo ago
      Even if my neighborhood is a public place, I don't agree that most public places should have 24hr video surveillance.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
toasty228 4mo ago
They'd save money if they knew exactly which spot of the wall to shoot through to kill the innocent sleeping person next door, that's at least a few dollars a week in bullets alone.

drbojingle 4mo ago

If the service is free, the product is you.

jiaosdjf 4mo ago

The Stasi would blush

dawnerd 4mo ago

Insurance companies too. They were one of the first ones to map out in detail building plans for entire cities.

_bypa 4mo ago

> There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police. Perhaps more to thieves who can make sure they break into a place worth raiding.

jMyles 4mo ago
No reason to reprhase-and-repeat.

bragr 4mo ago

>There is plenty of money to be made selling home layouts to police. The police basically already have this in the form of building records. Unless you live in a really old building or you've made unapproved modifications, they've got an accurate layout if they care to look.

jjulius 4mo ago
There's nuance, though. You're right in that they can get a general layout of the rooms in the home, but a mapped layout from a device like this gives them a lot more detailed information - where large objects are that potential targets could hide behind, or stash things. One data point offers a drawing of where the walls are, another paints a picture of where everything the occupant owns is sitting.
- bragr 4mo ago
  There is some nuance, but in real life the SWAT teams will just crash a bearcat through the wall and fly a cheap drone through the hole to scope out the situation if need be. And as for searching, they don't need a scan to know how to upend everything in a house. People aren't robots, once they're inside, they have their own situational awareness. The real privacy nightmare with this data to me is marketers mining it for what you have or don't have in your home and hyper targeting you that you need to buy a new coffee table or whatever.
  - jjulius 4mo ago
    > ... fly a cheap drone through the hole... Until someone inside shoots it. Much easier to just grab data from yesterday's cleaning. But perhaps I'm overthinking that? I do tend to lean into the idea that SWAT seem to be more of the Leroy Jenkins, times-up-let's-do-this, smash-and-grab types. > The real privacy nightmare with this data to me... Oh absolutely, totally agree there.