[HN Gopher] Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly...
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Amazon to acquire maker of Roomba vacuum for roughly $1.7B
Author : mrkramer
Score : 424 points
Date : 2022-08-05 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| azemetre wrote:
| Huh interesting to note that iRobot has a large Massachusetts
| presence. Another robotics acquisition from Amazon was also HQ'ed
| in Mass (Kiva). Interesting to see how far Amazon has expanded
| into the state (lots of AWS teams are based around seaport as
| well).
| millerm wrote:
| I expect the Amazon version to require wi-fi or cellular, will
| have microphones and cameras for "Alexa support", and will
| automatically submit the stream to the police of what the Amazon
| operatives, sorry "operators", deem sketchy. Remember kids if you
| live in a state where "it" is not legal, don't let this thing
| vacuum up your shake; that's evidence.
|
| What will The monthly subscription fee to store your vacuum data
| in the cloud cost?
|
| It's a joke... Don't ban me.
| roland35 wrote:
| I have heard from a former irobot employee that they were
| besieged by the same issues I had while working in consumer
| robotics: endless priority changes and lack of long term product
| vision. This is why their lawn mower robot apparently failed to
| launch
|
| I feel like if a company just focused on the basics (ie reliable
| cleaning) instead of a bunch of different marketing gimmicks, it
| will work out long term.
| gbba wrote:
| > focus on the basics instead of marketing gimmicks
|
| This reminds me of what Steve Jobs said about Xerox[0]. After
| achieving market leadership in their industry, engineering at
| iRobot seems to have been pushed aside in the company's
| decision making process.
|
| Is this a consequence of being a publicly traded company? After
| all, pushing consumables and subscription services requires
| less capital and makes more money compared to developing a
| better robot. The $1.7B exit seems like a good outcome for a
| stagnant (relative to its peers) company.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/NlBjNmXvqIM?t=56
| bhouston wrote:
| Interesting. I do love my Roomba. I think they are very popular.
| I guess this will improve the Alexa integration.
|
| Other home robots on the way I suspect?
| patwolf wrote:
| I've always wondered how iRobot hasn't been more successful. They
| have a cool name, brand recognition, first-mover advantage. It's
| been nearly 20 years since their IPO. I would have expected by
| now that robots would have taken over more household cleaning
| tasks, but it doesn't seem like the technology has improved much
| in the past two decades.
|
| I gave up on my roomba because it would always get stuck in
| something before it could finish cleaning. I now use a Dyson
| stick vac.
| ghaff wrote:
| Leaving specifics of Roomba vs. competitors aside, the basic
| concept just doesn't work well in a lot of situations. My house
| ends up having a bunch of cords and clutter. And even on the
| "single level" ground floor which is fairly open and fairly
| heavily trafficked, there are a number of small level changes
| between rooms because of additions over time.
|
| I'm with you. I considered a Roomba a few years back but came
| to the conclusion that a Dyson cordless vac essentially solved
| my problem by making it trivial to spend a few minutes pulling
| out and running a vac as opposed to hauling out a canister vac
| between housecleanings.
|
| My brother, on the other hand, has dogs and has a newly
| constructed single level house that they keep pretty free of
| clutter. A robo-vacuum works pretty well for them.
| zippergz wrote:
| I've always felt like these products were mainly designed for
| people who live in single-level small-ish apartments, but
| then it's confusing because manually vacuuming those isn't
| very hard either. I just don't understand the market.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's mostly my kitchen/dining room/"mudroom" area that can
| use regular quick vacs between full housecleanings. But
| looking right now I have some shoes and other things
| scattered around and it's literally about 3 minutes to do a
| touchup with my Dyson stick vac which has been great.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's for wealthy people who have large homes with large
| open spaces. People who have enough storage that they don't
| have clutter on the floor.
|
| I grew up next to a neighborhood of 5000sf+ homes, and I
| never saw clutter in any of them. Some of them had house
| cleaners, but even the ones that didn't, they had storage
| everywhere, so everything got put away. A Roomba on every
| floor would be perfect for them.
|
| I moved away before Roomba existed, but I imagine a lot of
| them have it.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm sure there's some correlation between wealth/space
| and lack of clutter. But my observation is that some
| people are just much more inclined not to leave a lot of
| loose things either on floors or table. I'm pretty sure I
| could have a house that was twice the size and it would
| still look very lived in.
| zippergz wrote:
| I have a large home with large open spaces and little
| clutter on the floor. But I'd need something like 8
| Roombas to cover it all because of the changes in levels,
| doors that are normally closed, etc.
|
| Also, as a semi-wealthy person with a large home, I hire
| people to clean it including vacuuming, and I don't need
| an annoying robot roaming the house to do it.
| owenwil wrote:
| Newer robots from companies iterating on the technology, like
| Roborock, can detect cables/shoes/stuff left on the floor and
| just drive around them. They're _a lot_ better than what
| Roomba is selling, and much better at dealing with the
| average home. I 've been really impressed with ours after
| having a similar, frustrating experience with one from
| iRobot.
| aelzeiny wrote:
| This is accurate. Their competitor, the Ecovacs Deebot,
| just push an OTA update making cable detection way better.
| In a way the previous comment encapsulates all the
| misconceptions about robovacs. I was recently surprised to
| learn how good they are because my only basis for
| comparison was my friend's failure of a Roomba that's
| always getting into shenanigans.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| As far as I can tell, first-mover advantage is a myth. The most
| successful products seem to rarely be the first to market.
| petra wrote:
| It's hard to compete with China. Willing to live on lower
| margins, more r&d, and cheaper cost to do r&d.
| jsight wrote:
| It wasn't just China. Roomba was really slow to move mapping
| technology into their lower end products. There was a lot of
| reputational damage done by making mediocre products their
| primary volume sellers.
| juve1996 wrote:
| Also faster iteration. Back in my mechanical engineering
| days, we'd design prototypes and then have to wait months for
| them to come in (of course they were built off-shore).
|
| Doing it onshore was difficult (few could handle our
| requests, or they were exorbitantly expensive and couldn't
| scale, and terrible quality control.)
|
| Thus we'd take a long, long time to work out design issues. A
| Chinese company can iterate much faster because of this.
| cellu wrote:
| Well it's more about how much does the state invest. That's
| how innovation exist (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State)
| ctvo wrote:
| > cheaper cost to do r&d.
|
| Is this a euphemism for outright IP theft?
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| They are ahead of the US when it comes to robot vacuums.
| ctvo wrote:
| This is a simplistic view of IP theft. The Chinese are
| much more advanced. Steal from Roomba at the beginning.
| Surpassed Roomba? Steal something from BMW that's secret
| Lidar navigation work. Steal something from Samsung for
| circuit design, steal something from Tesla, steal
| something from Mobileeye, etc.
| petra wrote:
| I meant cheaper engineers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I wonder how much of it is also people like me. I work in tech,
| but I despise single-purpose household "gadgets." I have a
| vacuum cleaner and a set of working eyes. I can clean the floor
| in 5 or 10 minutes, rather than having a "robot" roaming the
| room randomly, bumping into things, and making noise for an
| hour. When I'm done, I store it away in a closet and don't have
| to look at an unsightly lump of plastic parked in a charging
| station. Bottom line, these cleaning robots don't solve any
| problem that I have, and they make my home less enjoyable to be
| in.
| soco wrote:
| Maybe they were so successful that some MBA decided to maximize
| shareholder value by cutting on superfluous R&D?
| jsight wrote:
| That seems to be the Neato story right now.
| criley2 wrote:
| The technology has come a long way in these years and the
| modern models are pretty good devices. I use a Miele canister
| vac for the deep cleans but I also have a Eufy and a Roborock
| robot vaccum, one does the random bouncing and the other uses
| LIDAR to map and clean intentionally, and they're both great. I
| run them several times a week and the amount of stuff they pull
| out of the carpet, rugs and off the hard floors is incredible.
| I would never bust out the Miele several times a week.
| pelorat wrote:
| They lost because the competition is better. Roborock and
| Ecovacs are superior devices to any of iRobots' offerings.
| theplumber wrote:
| Their robots started to suck after a while ! They are more
| interested in extracting more from their customers than
| creating better robots. Best example is their mopping robot
| that they try to market using a kind of "subscription" model
| with proprietary pads. The chinese roborock is so much better
| and they get better after each release.
| malfist wrote:
| Their mopping robot was an extreme letdown. We bought the
| nicer one and it has such a tiny tank that it can't clean my
| downstairs without needing refilling halfway through.
|
| Plus any cleaning solution besides theirs breaks the robot.
| Plus the cleaning pad it uses to mop needs to be replaced
| after every run Plus it's a lot more aggressive than the
| regular roomba and slams itself into things, knocking all
| kinds of things over.
|
| The cleaning solution is very expensive. The pads have DRM
| and are very expensive. The robot is very expensive.
|
| Thanks to all it's drawbacks it's not really able to be
| automated. So you wind up with a mop that you still have to
| manage, direct to run, and feed expensive soap and cleaning
| pads. In reality, I have the robot, and it's been plugged in
| for 4+ years and probably not been ran for 3+ years.
| thethethethe wrote:
| I have mine dry mop to keep the dust down rather than wet
| mopping every day. It's much less work than wet mopping, I
| just need to change the pad once a week.
|
| It still takes a long time to mop and gets stuck more often
| than my i7 but it's mostly hands free.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Their robots started to suck after a while !
|
| I dunno, I would hope they started to suck right out of the
| box.
|
| (Old MS joke...)
| swores wrote:
| It's a funny joke if you're making a pun on its vacuum
| function being "sucking", but if you're just using it as a
| joke that applied to Microsoft then you're not using the
| pun and just making an almost-joke of "their product is
| bad".
| BeetleB wrote:
| I'm making a pun, just as the MS joke used the same pun.
|
| For people who don't know, the joke is"
|
| "What is the only product that MS can make that won't
| suck?"
|
| "A vacuum cleaner."
| swores wrote:
| Fair enough, my bad!
| julianlam wrote:
| > The chinese roborock is so much better and they get better
| after each release.
|
| Are you buying multiple robots over time?
|
| Christ, and here I am thinking $1000 CAD is a lot of money.
| rasz wrote:
| Selling stuff you no longer use is a thing. Not everyone
| just throws stuff out, or donates to goodwill.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Yeah I had a Roomba 10 years ago. It was starting to age a bit
| (still working! but would always get stuck). So I was
| thinking.. it's been a decade.. time to buy a new model, surely
| they improved!
|
| Nope, nothing is better, absolutely nothing. The "AI" (if we
| can call it that) to vacuum hasn't improved one bit. It somehow
| seems so suck a lot less on the carpet than the previous one.
| It's somewhat better to manage my cat's hair, but that's about
| it. Sure now I have wifi on it, to re-start it because it often
| stops too early before it's done. But nothing, no improvement
| in 10 years.. in ROBOT TECHNOLOGY!
| brandon272 wrote:
| Same experience. Bought a Roomba in 2008 and didn't like it
| much. Bought another in 2021 and was shocked at how little it
| had improved in that time. It's better, but not by much. And
| clearly behind the technology in some of the Chinese vacs.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Watch vacuum reviews on Vacuum Wars channel, tons of
| innovation, mostly not with Roombas though
|
| https://youtube.com/c/VacuumWars/videos
| [deleted]
| htrp wrote:
| horrible execution most likely..... the lawn mowing robot has
| been a joke internally since 2011
| zahma wrote:
| Is Amazon in the position where they have so much cash on hand
| that the most promising short-term growth strategy is for them to
| aggressively buy new companies? It seems like this is a model of
| growth for over-expansion --- or world domination along the lines
| of tech-campus states in Oryx and Crake.
|
| They have their fingers in so many pies and realms of data that
| it seems like they are quickly becoming hegemonic data holders.
| They're already expanding into healthcare, which chills me to my
| bone, beyond that they've basically covered every facet of the
| typical Westerner's existence with no sign of stopping.
|
| It's high time for anti-trust laws on data, including the sharing
| and mass aggregation of data through and by intermediates.
| repple wrote:
| A ..formidable response to Tesla's humanoid robot project.
| uptown wrote:
| Ring for the cameras outside your house. Roomba for the cameras
| rolling around the inside of your house.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| Outside your home with Ring, inside our wallets with the credit
| cards, inside our home with Echo and now Roomba and then
| controlling it all with Alexa.
|
| How far away are we from a future where Amazon uses roomba/alexa
| to inspect what we need, what we're missing, and then just ship
| it to us and charge it on the card?
| bagacrap wrote:
| using a Roomba to track inventory seems strange but the idea of
| automatically shipping me what I need instead of a time based
| subscription sounds wonderful
| robotnixon wrote:
| They sort of have something that kind of does that.
| https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Smart-Shelf/dp/B07RV6X8LZ
| seydor wrote:
| That sounds like too much work. Better move to one of those new
| Amazon Human Farms(TM) that offer the amazon way of life for
| only $1999/mo
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm surprised that none of the comments mention iRobot's recent
| 50% stock decline, 30% drop in Q2 sales, or layoff announcement
| (10% of workforce).
|
| I wonder how this deal would have gone down (if at all) had
| iRobot not encountered these headwinds.
| jacooper wrote:
| Its unfortunate that there seems no way to use any kind of home
| automation without spying.
|
| Vacuum robots are pretty useful, but I don't want my home
| location, its map and many other details to be sent and used for
| advertising.
|
| And it seems there is nothing like this, except maybe offline
| vaccum robots, which tend to be a lot more limited.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Is there a robot vacuum that has mapping but doesn't require an
| internet connection? I know there are some projects to trick
| robots into working without internet, but I'm looking for one
| that actually just works.
|
| There are some models that don't require internet and just kind
| of bump around the house, but they don't work well for multiple
| rooms. Would be nice if there was one that didn't require a cloud
| connection that will stop working some day.
| elforce002 wrote:
| So, they are truly trying to map everything. Between ring, echo
| and now this, they're basically mapping 3/5 senses.
|
| I'm willing to bet that they'll come up with some type of map
| service or jump in on the VR space.
|
| This is a level of data gathering a government coud only dream
| of.
| cainxinth wrote:
| Not a huge number for this day and age. Household cleaning robots
| must be a low margin business.
| dtagames wrote:
| For a device manufacturer? It seems like a pretty huge number
| to me. And for what these things sell for, pretty high margin,
| too.
| wrexx0r wrote:
| Opening my first Roomba was a great experience. Once you open the
| box there's a paragraph saying how "this is your Roomba, enjoy
| doing what you want with it. There's documentation online on
| using the diagnostic serial port to control your Roomba". This
| and how iRobot still sells all parts for all of their robots all
| the way back to the original made me find them to be the better
| company even if their innovation wasn't as competitive.
| kodah wrote:
| I am really sad to see this. iRobot's support is second to none
| in my experience. Their new vacuum that produces maps of the
| house and has a base station with a bag has been a delight. The
| parts aren't to expensive, the service is good, and they
| constantly improve my existing bot.
|
| All of this, I'm sure, will go out the window along with a fear
| that my house will not become a well of data.
| jedberg wrote:
| Here's a tangential thought I just had: One of the main selling
| points of robot vacuums is that they can work while you're away
| at work, so your house is magically clean when you get back.
|
| Now that a bunch of people work from home, will the usefulness
| drop? If you're always home, when do you schedule the vacuum to
| run so it doesn't get in the way or make loud noises during a
| meeting? Or if you get the wet mopping model, when does it run so
| the floor has time to dry?
| davidn20 wrote:
| I WFH for the entire time I had my roborock. The sound is
| annoying, but I still run it every day. The main selling point
| for me is I don't have to vacuum.
| seydor wrote:
| I have never been satisfied with roomba (granted, i got the
| basic-level devices). They re just not good and it seems there's
| loss of otential there. I m thinking to get a cheap xiaomi to
| give it a try
| eh9 wrote:
| And I'm about to drop my Roomba on the second hand market.
| jonym wrote:
| I guess embedded microphones are the next thing to be added to
| these. It's for better voice control guys, nothing to see here.
| fareesh wrote:
| _Jordan Peterson voice_ : Hey Alexa clean my goddamn room
| syntaxing wrote:
| I mean not trying to start a flame war, but everyone is praising
| how great roborock is but the reality is, most of Xiaomi/Roborock
| technology is stolen/reversed engineered from Neato. Chinese
| robot vacuum would not even be close to their current
| capabilities if it wasn't for the LiDAR on the XV11. If you look
| at the tear down from the first couple gen, the PCB and
| components were exactly the same compared to Neatos. (I owned
| both Neato and Roborock vacuums).
| bmitc wrote:
| From what I can tell, Chinese companies will freely steal
| technology from other countries and companies, which is
| obviously frustrating and not great, but then they relatively
| quickly start exceeding the technology they stole, quickly
| adding features not present in the original products. So it's a
| bit dangerous for American companies to sit on their heels
| saying Chinese companies are stealing. Yes, they are, and it's
| frustrating, but then those Chinese companies add features at a
| rapid pace that the American companies can seemingly not keep
| up with.
| nervousvarun wrote:
| I'm not sure how many Chinese HN users we have...but I'd
| personally love to see them chime in occasionally on this
| topic.
|
| My personal experience/conclusions drawn from business,
| experiences in grad school etc. (so obviously not worth much
| and poorly sourced from a data perspective) are that certain
| seemingly obvious concepts like "cheating" or "stealing" are
| just fundamentally understood differently and not ingrained
| in a Western compatible way culturally in China. There seems
| to be deep differences there that manifest in all kinds of
| ways.
| chris_st wrote:
| Bunnie Huang [1] has written/spoke on this topic. I think
| he mentions it in the Shenzen documentary [2]. Quote from
| the documentary page:
|
| > We examine the unique manufacturing ecosystem that has
| emerged, gaining access to the world's leading hardware-
| prototyping culture whilst challenging misconceptions from
| the west. The film looks at how the evolution of "Shanzhai"
| - or copycat manufacturing - has transformed traditional
| models of business, distribution and innovation, and asks
| what the rest of the world can learn from this so-called
| "Silicon Valley of hardware".
|
| 1: https://www.bunniestudios.com 2:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY
| bmitc wrote:
| I'm not sure it's part of personal or societal culture. The
| Chinese people I know, granted who are all highly educated
| and also some of the nicest people I know period, do not
| abide by this culture of stealing/copying and find it as
| frustrating as anyone. So in my opinion, it's more of an
| economic and possibly state-driven culture.
| liuliu wrote:
| Well, can IP be stolen? It is a state-protected monopoly.
| If you steal my IP, we both have these IPs.
|
| Using the word "stealing" is fundamentally wrong about
| intellectual creations.
|
| What frustrating me more is that Roborock cannot use the
| double-roller design iRobot has due to patents.
| telchior wrote:
| I think if a culture finds out that doing a particular
| thing benefits it greatly, and that it cannot be punished
| for doing that thing... it will do that thing.
|
| This idea of "cultural differences in the idea of stealing"
| is a bit silly. It's based on self-reports of the people
| who are stealing, and making massive amounts of money from
| the theft. Rationalizations, in other words.
|
| In all honesty, if I could "steal" from a culture with a
| far superior level of technology without repercussion, in
| order to sell products mainly within my own culture, I'd do
| it too. It's still a benefit to the whole group, isn't it?
| The same story plays out every time this power dynamic
| comes up, and in far more varied patterns than people talk
| about (e.g. Japan "stealing" transistor designs to start
| its electronics giants, with the cooperation of a few
| Americans but still against moral values).
| greiskul wrote:
| "Stealing" and "cheating" was also the US way before it
| became the top dog. Intelectual property on patents has
| always been used as a tool for the current world powers to
| try to cement themselves as permanent world powers. But it
| doesn't work, other countries are also sovereign, and they
| don't have to respect US laws made to create US monopolies.
| hinkley wrote:
| Sadly I think this is just encouraging US companies to make
| products that phone home, and require a service contract.
| It's much harder to copy that part, and more lucrative.
| dig1 wrote:
| In Chinese culture, copying (I would not use the word
| "stealing") symbolizes respect for a product and has roots in
| Confucianism (however, let's avoid potential exploitation of
| this). But don't forget that Americans behaved similarly in
| the 19th century [1], and Brits did the same to Dutchs. So I
| guess this is a common pattern for raising powers.
|
| [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/
| Pigalowda wrote:
| Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery is the go to
| argument here? And it wouldn't be complete without 200 year
| old whataboutism. I am unimpressed.
| googlryas wrote:
| This pathetic point always gets brought up when talking
| about China's IP theft, but it should be telling that it is
| literally one individual from 200+ years ago who is
| _always_ mentioned.
|
| What did he do? He worked in a factory and memorized
| details about the machines, and then went to America and
| rebuilt them.
|
| Is that what Chinese companies are doing? Do they get
| someone hired at the company, who then memorizes things,
| and then goes back to China and rebuilds them?
|
| No one would care if China was operating the way Slater
| operated. That is common even with Americans moving from
| one American company to another. What is not common is
| directly stealing designs and schematics and billions of
| bits of other information through nefarious means, by
| breaching a company's cyber security or infiltrating their
| supply line.
| triceratops wrote:
| > quickly adding features not present in the original
| products. So it's a bit dangerous for American companies to
| sit on their heels
|
| Why can't American companies study the Chinese products and
| do the same in turn?
| vasachi wrote:
| Do American companies manufacture anything in China? Yes.
| Do Chinese companies manufacture anything in USA? No.
|
| So USA can only watch, while China can actually steal.
| triceratops wrote:
| Do you need to see manufacturing processes to steal
| features? Is it not possible to reverse engineer a lot of
| it?
|
| In the car industry, it's standard practice for every
| company to buy every model from every other company to
| study it.
| vasachi wrote:
| It still is easier to copy, when you own manufactiring
| process.
| hungryhobo wrote:
| They already do, see facebook/tik tok
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > If you look at the tear down from the first couple gen, the
| PCB and components were exactly the same compared to Neatos.
|
| I'm interested, please link to that.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Just look at the tear down videos on the XV11 compared the
| any roborock tear down. I would link you the XV11hacking site
| but seems like it's down. It had everything from firmware to
| schematics that hobbyist did in the early 2010s since it was
| the cheapest way to get a 2D LiDAR (pulling it from a the
| vacuum itself).
| Someone1234 wrote:
| You said they were "exactly the same" circuit boards.
| You're saying you were able to make that evaluation using
| multiple tear-down videos that weren't doing a side-by-
| side?
| derefr wrote:
| I'm not the GP poster, but doing a visual comparison, if
| you've got chips of the same size and shape in the same
| places, and the same passives in the same places, and the
| trace routing is also visually the same between them,
| wouldn't you feel that's pretty definitive?
| leadpan2 wrote:
| I was at iRobot for holiday season 2003; 1st gen Roomba was
| out, MANY of the returns piled up along the hallways of HQ.
|
| One day the "director of sales"? walked into the standup
| meeting like Vince McMahon into the arena and slammed down this
| robot onto the coffee table that was a pitch-perfect copy of
| the Roomba, except it was tea green and had more colorful LEDs
| and sounds. "F this and F that" like we had any ability to stop
| that from happening. I did the teardown and it was a near-
| perfect mechanical copy like somebody walked the molds across
| the street. The PCB was different where they chose cheaper
| connectors. It was way prettier looking IMO. What they couldn't
| copy was the logic; the SW/uC was handled through a different
| chain so unless you literally stole a pile of programmed parts,
| you'd be on your own. The Roomba development team consoled
| themselves that the performance of floor coverage of this
| knock-off was worse than the original...but to be frank, both
| were only useful under limited circumstances that I found
| nobody I knew had. I'd have better luck with an old sweep-
| broom.
|
| As an intern, those returns piling up were so they wouldn't get
| resold elsewhere or scavenged. And there were a LOT of returns;
| its a complicated design with a LOT of cables and connectors
| and some marginal components going out of the expected
| tolerances. One of my jobs was to strip out the batteries, lay
| these robots out in the back parking lot, and using a pointed
| steel rod, 'spear-fish' them to render them unusable. To make
| my work quick I'd aim for the 'brain' - the middle where the
| case was thin and I'd bust through the microcontroller part of
| the main PCB. Aim, 'crunch', make sure I 'killed' it, and then
| fling it into the dumpster. Nearly 20 years on, I fondly
| remember thinking 'I can't believe I get paid to do this!'
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| Wow that last bit sounds like the start of a SF novel about
| robot uprising. Thanks for sharing your story!
| make3 wrote:
| they'll come for him first, try him at the Hague :')
| hinkley wrote:
| I don't think this one will get a trial.
| [deleted]
| endisneigh wrote:
| All of humanity is copying from each other and building on top
| of each other.
|
| Does it really matter?
| Invictus0 wrote:
| You're asking if it matters that a tyrannical, genocidal,
| geopolitical rival is blatantly vacuuming up American
| technology and IP, and then using it to undercut the American
| companies that invested to develop it?
| drexlspivey wrote:
| You mean like USA did in the 1800s?
| https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-
| eur...
| [deleted]
| syntaxing wrote:
| You know what the US also had in the 1800s? Slaves.
| Doesn't justify for anyone else legalizing slaves in this
| day and age. That's why whataboutism is a fallacy. Past
| history is not a moral argument.
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| > Past history is not a moral argument.
|
| Sure it isn't if it doesn't suit you, very convenient.
| Yet we live in very world completely and utterly in pure
| 100% mathematical way defined by only our past.
|
| All the crap happened/happening/will happen in middle
| east and africa? Consequence primarily of european
| colonialism. Sure we can argue that enough time has
| passed, entire generations. Yet the places are as fucked
| up as ever, I would argue even more so.
|
| Or you can explain this to germans who as a nation are
| still traumatized by what their ancestors did in WWII
| (shows how decent the core/soul of that nation is...
| imagine russians in similar situation, they would just
| blatantly lie about it and imprison/disappear anybody
| saying differently, like ie Katyn massacre).
|
| Past _is_ a moral argument, like it or not. It isn 't a
| tool to justify anything and I am not commenting on
| current topic of intellectual theft (which is a rather
| pointless tea time effort) but ignoring it won't you any
| good since you won't be able to grok why people or
| nations behave as they do.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Not sure how I'm deciding certain standpoints when it's
| convenient for me. There's a big difference on
| acknowledging the past as a understanding of where we are
| today compared to justifying your actions of today
| morally based on the past decisions of others. The
| difference is this, "People in our past did some really
| shitty things, we acknowledge it, and it put us in our
| current position" vs "Someone in the past did shitty
| stuff, so it's totally cool for me to be equally shitty".
| Once again, your argument is textbook whatsboutism. Why
| it's a fallacy is because all your examples is trying to
| deflect your moral deficiencies on the basis of others.
| The conversation should be steered to on the morality of
| IP theft. Not whether others have done it or not.
| buttersbrian wrote:
| Basically every culture has had genocidal endeavors. Does
| this mean we can justify genocide currently, or in the
| future? Me thinks not. Do you want to act morally now, or
| use some past action as an excuse to not do the right
| thing?
| [deleted]
| dalbasal wrote:
| I shouldn't be commenting this deep into flame but...
|
| That's a demonization argument. If anything china-related
| is bad ipso facto, then I suppose discussion ends where it
| starts. What comes after " _tyrannical, genocidal,
| geopolitical rival_ " in a sentence doesn't matter.
|
| If talking IP/Patents... I think the american position is
| somewhat blind. Consider:
|
| (1) Patents are a recent invention, not a longstanding or
| inevitable institution
|
| (2) There are some decent (IMO) arguments for patents being
| bad in general, economically, technologically and morally.
|
| (3) China has been forced to adopt this "western" patent
| system, under which it owns almost no patents. They play
| very loose with the rules, but they still exist within that
| legal framework.
|
| The US' no. 1 priority in trade deals and foreign policy
| generally was and remains patent enforcement, US-like
| contract enforcement and other commercial law stuff...
| "Governance" is the categorical euphemism. The US is as
| serious about this stuff as China is about Taiwan. China,
| and almost every other country abides it, whether or not
| it's compatible with their interest, values, etc.
|
| (4) Those American companies made those investments, and
| have enjoyed the returns. They knew the rules going in and
| chose to comply over decades. Are they US companies? Aren't
| they "global companies?" That's the approach the US itself
| has been evangelising for 40 years.
|
| Is the "fair" scenario you imagine a world where US
| companies produce their products in china, without local
| technology transfers and spin off industries? That's total
| nonsense, and outside the (advisable) scope of a legal
| system to enforce. US companies take the lion's share of
| profits, offloading the high turnover, low margin
| sectors... Like the Apple/Foxconn thing. Well... everything
| has consequences.
|
| You really imagine a world where china builds all the
| vacuum cleaners, but can't build vacuum cleaners by itself?
| Georgelemental wrote:
| China is a totalitarian state--the Chinese government can
| coerce its corporations to take any action for any reason
| at any time. If the Chinese government is an enemy of the
| US, and Chinese companies function as an extension of
| their country's government, then we must treat those
| companies as enemies. The people who work in those
| corporations are mostly average Joes like you and I, but
| the CCP can harvest their organs at any time, so we are
| forced to be wary.
| jsight wrote:
| Exactly, our patent system is causing innovation in the
| US to happen on a cycle similar to the life of the
| patents themselves. Things don't progress until the
| patents expire and other companies can copy them (see
| also, the segway mess, electric unicycles, onewheels,
| or... vacuums).
|
| It isn't at all obvious that patents are more helpful
| than harmful in this space.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| >That's a demonization argument. If anything china-
| related is bad ipso facto, then I suppose discussion ends
| where it starts. What comes after "tyrannical, genocidal,
| geopolitical rival" in a sentence doesn't matter.
|
| Yes, we shouldn't be supporting China in any way. They
| are an enemy and don't share our values, and it's an
| unfortunate consequence of poor policy that we do
| business with them at all.
| [deleted]
| seydor wrote:
| And it's quite disingenuous for IT people to make a fuss
| about it. EVERYTHING in tech started with some sort of
| piracy, of music, of web content, of videos, of books, of
| hotels, of taxis, it's persistently the right strategy. And
| that's good, the world can't hang onto gatekeepers forever.
| syntaxing wrote:
| It matters because people who take risk and innovate should
| be rewarded. When that fails, theres no point for anyone to
| take risks and release new products.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| As a consumer, I don't give a damn about these companies
| copying each other, I just want better products. But yeah,
| if I worked at iRobot I would be annoyed.
| jsight wrote:
| And yet somehow the result has been a vast acceleration in
| the rate of improvement of robotic vacuums. It isn't
| evident that we are in the right here.
| davemp wrote:
| The result is also all of the innovative product ideas
| that never see the light of day because two weeks after
| launch there'd be a Chinese knock off on the market for
| half the price making it impossible to recoup R&D.
|
| That's a big reason behind the push to SaaS and server
| based solutions.
| seydor wrote:
| Facebook stealing from snapchat. Youtube stealing from
| instagram who stole from tiktok , stealing from vine etc
| etc. I don't think it stopped other people from taking
| risks.
| blocked_again wrote:
| Why does it matter? In grand scheme of things there are now
| more people who have access to cheaper and efficent cleaning
| systems.
|
| All companies are reverse engineering the Universe anyway. It's
| not like you build these technologies out of thin air.
| knodi123 wrote:
| Why does large-scale corporate IP theft matter? Well, for one
| thing, I can't imagine the next Neato being willing to invest
| in all that R&D if a chinese company is going to rip it off
| and sell it for peanuts, just so the internet can say "wow,
| this chinese product is amazing, and I don't know why
| corporate IP theft matters!"
| blocked_again wrote:
| It's a free market. There are plenty of companies investing
| in R&D even after knowing that there is the possibility of
| copyright infringement. There is still a huge upside in
| developing these tech.
| powerhour wrote:
| The only reason engineers in the US adopted "clean rooms"
| was to circumvent copyright law, not because they simply
| weren't willing to copy IP from their competitors. US
| companies still invested heavily in R&D. Maybe Chinese
| companies will do the same?
| brandon272 wrote:
| The risk of someone ripping off your idea, designs, etc.
| has always existed, exists now more than ever with the
| internet, yet it doesn't seem to stop people with ideas
| from trying to take those ideas to fruition.
|
| I've never talked to any rational person with an idea they
| were passionate about who said they weren't interested in
| continuing with it because someone else might steal it.
| toss1 wrote:
| Then you've never talked to any VC or angel investor.
|
| A primary concern of any investor is whether you have a
| defensible 'moat" for your product or service - can you
| make something that will then have a high barrier to
| entry of competitors.
|
| If you cannot articulate how you will have reasonably
| solid protection from patents. copyright, or trade secret
| practices, good luck getting investment.
|
| Your only strategy will be to somehow make & stock ready
| to ship as much of your easily copied product as you can
| before promoting it, and hope your promotion, marketing,
| and initial sales are a huge hit _BEFORE_ some Chinese
| rip-off artist starts marketing it on AliBaba in single-
| digit days. I 've read of cases where people had their
| product literally found for sale on Chinese sites before
| their first marketing & customer shipments started,
| because the design was ripped off from the factory.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Why does it matter in the grand scheme of things to point out
| stolen tech?
| jker wrote:
| Please spend the next year doing a bunch of free engineering
| and design work for me, thanks in advance.
| blocked_again wrote:
| The companies knew that copyright infringement is a
| possibility when developing the tech. They knew the reward
| was still worth it despite of that.
|
| I am not getting anything designing work for you. On the
| other hand I can launch my own side projects. I know that
| if they are any good people are going to copy and start rip
| offs. I am willing to take that risk.
| tengbretson wrote:
| I bet when Neato found out about this they immediately almost
| moved production to a country with adequate labor protections
| and IP laws. Almost.
| jitl wrote:
| Roomba / iRobot is years behind the Chinese companies. We just
| got an Ecovacs X1 Omni - a mopping vacuum bot with actual
| rotating mop scrubbers, AI vision obstacle avoidance, LIDAR
| mapping, and most importantly fully automated water fill & mop
| pad cleaning at the base station. We fill a clean water tank &
| empty the dirty one about once a week. Floors are spotless - huge
| difference from static cloth mopping bots.
|
| Meanwhile, iRobot still hadn't figured out how to make an
| effective stand-alone mop bot, much less an auto fill station or
| combined bot that actually works. Roborock and Ecovacs products
| launch in China 6-12 months before their US launch. By the time
| Roomba has a decent mop bot, the X2 or X3 will probably be out
| offering integration with home plumbing to avoid any manual
| intervention for months at a time.
|
| EDIT: commenters are asking what works offline from Roborock /
| Ecovacs. For the self-cleaning-mop generation like the X1 Omni:
|
| - Roborock obstacle avoidance is local, but works better with
| cloud.
|
| - Roborock can be controlled by a local home automation server
| without internet access.
|
| - Ecovacs obstacle avoidance requires cloud.
|
| - Ecovacs control requires cloud.
|
| I remembered these stats from a Youtube video that I can't find;
| probably in my partner's history since we watched reviews on the
| TV together.
|
| I picked the X1 Omni over the Roborock because it has superior
| mopping performance on tile floors, but I think both would be
| good options. It seems like Roborock is more privacy compatible.
| peteradio wrote:
| > will probably be out offering integration with home plumbing
| to avoid any manual intervention for months at a time.
|
| I can't even get a chicken waterer to work for months at a
| time, no way I'd let a robot access. Even so, is it so bad to
| let China take the lead, western design can go on vacay and rip
| off the results when they get back!
| jitl wrote:
| > can go on vacay and rip off the results when they get back
|
| You can clone the design if there's capital left after
| consumers have been buying the competitor for years, but can
| you clone the manufacturing process or price as easily when
| you're years behind?
|
| We see with Qualcomm CPUs and Android phones - the internals
| are still a few years behind iPhone after about a decade, and
| Apple still takes the lions share of profits in the phone
| market.
| nixass wrote:
| > We just got an Ecovacs X1 Omni - a mopping vacuum bot with
| actual rotating mop scrubbers, AI vision obstacle avoidance,
| LIDAR mapping, and most importantly fully automated water fill
| & mop pad cleaning at the base station
|
| Well for 1500 Eur it better does all of it and even more
| cactus2093 wrote:
| That's exactly what makes this a good acquisition, right?
| Roomba has the brand/trademark recognition in the US and solid
| marketshare but a stagnant product, which iRobot apparently
| does not have the expertise needed to keep improving. For
| Amazon that should be a pretty straightforward technical/ML
| problem to solve to get back to the forefront of where Xiaomi,
| Ecovacs, etc. are.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| I can second this. Roborock was already years ahead when we
| bought ours (3 years ago?) and when I look at what their latest
| models can do it's pretty clear that Roomba forgot to invest
| into new technologies.
| hintymad wrote:
| What I don't understand is how iRobot, once an iconic
| innovator, could move so slow and innovate so little that
| Roborock, a company founded in 2014, could beat the shit out of
| iRobot.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| I sincerely desire to avoid having a mobile, internet connected
| device that equips many sensors and cameras in my home that is
| designed, manufactured and supported by a Chinese company.
| ev1 wrote:
| I don't want this with an American company either. Local
| only.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Amazon isn't exactly pure here, can we have neither?
| jjav wrote:
| I sincerely desire to avoid having a mobile, internet
| connected device that equips many sensors and cameras in my
| home.
| nivenkos wrote:
| > Ecovacs X1 Omni
|
| It costs $1400 here, literally $1000 more than the basic Roomba
| models, and still $400-600 more than buying a Roomba mop and
| vacuum separately.
| shultays wrote:
| Does mop pad really work? I only have roborock with no fancy
| mop pad cleaning base station but ignoring that all it does is
| dragging a wet cloth around. I don't see that helping much
| thesuitonym wrote:
| How easy are the Chinese models to repair? I can't speak for
| iRobot's mop bots, but the older model vacuums were insanely
| easy to repair. I had a motor die on one, and it was about ten
| phillips head screws to get to it, remove it, and pop in a $10
| replacement. I was amazed to see a modern consumer item that
| was so easy to repair.
|
| Of course, this is a model I bought used almost ten years ago.
| Not sure how similar current models are.
| tommit wrote:
| I can only speak about the Roborock S5, but I assume the
| newer ones are fairly comparable.
|
| I once had it give me an error that the main fan (for
| suction) was broken. In this case, there was a small particle
| lunged into it, so it wouldn't spin. All it took was a little
| wiggle, and it spun again.
|
| It's definitely more than 10 phillips head screws, but less
| than 30. I guess it depends which part broke, but I had to
| disassemble pretty much the whole thing. I can promise you
| that my repair skills or experiences are very novice, but I
| managed just fine. Had two screws left over after putting it
| all back together as is tradition, but I suppose they weren't
| mission critical, as this was like 3 years back and Dobby is
| still cleaning like a champ.
|
| Like half a year ago, the LIDAR broke. Ordered a new one on
| amazon for 20 bucks, unscrewed now about 28 screws and
| exchanged the broken part. Put it all together, again tossed
| away a screw that left me wondering where it belonged, and it
| still works to this day.
|
| This was a very long way of saying "Roborocks repair fairly
| easily, and there are numerous tutorials online."
|
| Edit: BTW, Dobby has been cleaning for almost 500 hours now.
| At that price point, there is no cheaper hourly cleaning
| staff :)
| [deleted]
| dawnerd wrote:
| From my experience super easy.
| resonanttoe wrote:
| Absolutely agree. The lack of LiDAR (or equiv) seems to really
| hamper iRobot's effectiveness - I had an iRobot i7 and its
| mapping/pathfinding was ramming in to things at near top speed
| and ricocheting off the walls.
|
| They also still sell vacuum and mopping* robots as seperate
| units which just drives up the cost. My old setup of the two
| robots took somewhere on the order of 5-6 hours to do a ~100m2
| apartment.
|
| I moved to a Roborock and then Dreame bot (someone really needs
| to talk to Xiaomi about all the sub-brands :P) comparitively,
| they both took around 1.5 to just under 2 hours to do a much
| better job.
|
| I actually felt huge guilt selling my two iRobot's to someone,
| wanting to tell them they were complete junk and they were
| wasting their money.
|
| *There is always mixed opinions on mopping effectiveness, but
| the iRobot roll-and-spit model of mopping is truly horrendous.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| I've felt that the iRobot mapping was acceptable.
|
| Once my i7 has generated a proper map, it will will slow down
| when it approaches known walls, or even places where
| obstacles have been several times in the past. It will need
| to bump into the obsticle or wall to confirm its position
| though.
|
| It does use a mostly predictable back and forth pattern,
| taking note of areas with walls/obstacles, and after the main
| sweeping it will combe back to go around the obstacles, and
| finally (optional) do a sweep of the walls. Then it moves
| onto the next room.
|
| The system does have limitations. For example, if it needs
| assistance in the middle of a clean job, after you fix it,
| there is a reasonable chance that it will do dumb stuff
| afterwards, like missing a large section of floor. (It seems
| to even know this, but have problematic coding that prevents
| it from doing the right thing).
|
| But yeah, I'd not call the mapping good, just acceptable.
|
| There are other annoyances like the i7 battery being so
| small, especially since they have a giant battery
| compartment. Like seriously big enough like ni-cad batteries
| battery of equivalent capacity. But they only offer a
| slightly larger capacity battery as part of their Costco
| exclusive model, and try to lock out third party batteries.
| The net result is that even when brand new, it could not
| quite do a single floor of my house in one go, needing to go
| recharge for like 40 minutes before it could do the last 10
| minutes of cleaning.
|
| The app is not very good. It does not even do some basic
| things like prompt the user for regular maintenance
| periodically based on number of hours used.
|
| The floor maps in the app are weird. For example, on one of
| my floors, the online map decided that the entrance to one of
| my rooms was on a completely different wall from where the
| entrance really was. It thought the actual door was just a
| wall. However the actually mapping data on the robot was just
| fine. It knew where the door really was, and never tried to
| drive though the wall where the online map though the door
| was.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > My old setup of the two robots took somewhere on the order
| of 5-6 hours to do a ~100m2 apartment
|
| I mean, yes, the first time, but my i7 takes like 2 hours to
| do my ~140sqm apartment?
| ixs wrote:
| Based on the comments here I did a quick look at Amazon and
| was surprised to not even see a single vacuum only robot from
| Evovacs. At least not prominently showcased.
|
| Why are there only mixed models and what are the benefits?
|
| If I look at my place the ground floor is tiled and the top
| floor is all carpet.
|
| That means I would need two vacuums anyway as they haven't
| learned yet to climb stairs.
|
| Why wouldn't I want a vacuum only model for upstairs? For
| downstairs the universal model is great obviously. But
| upstairs?
| resonanttoe wrote:
| I know there were a lot of simple vac only bots in the
| roborock line up. S5 and similar the mopping funciton is a
| small pad that you manually wet and it drags along behind.
| It kind of sucks but if you were in the market for just a
| vacuum, you remove the bracket and it's fine. The robot has
| no knowledge of the mop as there isn't a tank.
|
| The S6Max that has a tank, you can also remove (easily, two
| button clips) and it'll not attempt any mopping feature. It
| also supposedly doesn't squirt water on to the pad when it
| knows its on carpet, but at some stage you may be dragging
| a mildly damp cloth on to the carpet. (was never an issue
| for me, the pad was never that wet that you could
| reasonably detect it on the carpet)
|
| Overall mopping with drag-behind pads is pretty...
| opportunistic? Its not great and you'll be in a position
| where you have to manually mop. Many models are switching
| to the spinning buffer pads which is a much better solution
| (that's the Dreame W10) but it refuses to do carpet. So its
| always a matter of finding a model that fits your use case.
|
| >That means I would need two vacuums anyway as they haven't
| learned yet to climb stairs.
|
| Many allow for multi floor mapping on a single bot, but
| stairs will always be a problem for the Daleks. :P
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| S5 works the same like you describe S6Max, maybe you're
| thinking about some older one.
| nerdjon wrote:
| I don't understand this, I had a Neato before I switched to
| iRobot and the lidar just seemed to be the worst idea for a
| home environment.
|
| On an almost weekly basis it would fail to start because it
| would think it was moved if something just moved a little bit
| nearby or a cat just happened to be sleeping nearby. This
| generally forced me to remap
|
| Then it would constantly get lost and be confused about what
| room it was in. Seemingly for the same reasons of things
| moving around.
|
| A home isn't a static environment and a camera just seems
| much more efficient. Not that a camera is perfect, but at
| least a camera can account for things moving around were
| lidar cannot.
|
| Or was this a case of Neato just not being good? The lidar
| issues was why I went with iRobot. It was a worse vacuum but
| if it actually works consistently than I can just have it run
| more often.
| jsight wrote:
| I have a neato and yeah, I think its neato's software. Its
| chock full'o'bugs. It routinely loses network connectivity
| and has to be rebooted to restore it. Of course, support
| will blame signal, but I've had that issue too and the
| behavior is different. A dead spot will just lose signal
| until it moves past it and gracefully recovers. This causes
| a weird error beep and then it doesn't recover.
|
| Beyond that, I've had it vacuum a floor twice. When it
| finished, it showed the space twice, because it became
| disoriented. Basically, it didn't just think the room
| changed shape, it thought it doubled in size!
|
| I've had it get lost because it thought it was on the
| opposite side of a rectangular room from where it actually
| was.
|
| They never update it to fix these things and, IMO, haven't
| shipped a truly new product in several years. I'm not
| shocked that a lot of other lidar-based products have
| surpassed them now.
| jitl wrote:
| > Or was this a case of Neato just not being good?
|
| I think this is a software issue with Neato. My previous
| bot was the cheapest Ecovacs with LiDAR and vacuum base
| station, and it could adapt to furniture movement, large
| boxes appearing and disappearing in the living room, etc
| without too much trouble.
|
| LiDAR (on the Ecovacs bots) _does_ struggle with mirrors
| and floor-to-ceiling windows. Even the X1 Omni is convinced
| there 's another room "inside" the large mirror I have in
| the living room. It's okay though since I just draw a no-go
| zone or no-go lines on the map wherever there's something
| odd.
|
| Really the best results will always use sensor fusion -
| LiDAR mapping + camera object avoidance + physical bump
| sensor seems to work pretty well on the Ecovacs bots. I
| love the improvement in cable and shoelace avoidance since
| upgrading to a model with vision.
| moepstar wrote:
| I've a Xiami / Roborock S5 for almost 5 years now (give or
| take a few months) and their LIDAR implementation is
| absolutely genius - no issues whatsoever, no matter what
| gets moved around or not...
|
| Must've been Neatos implementation i suppose...
|
| On top of the really top-notch LIDAR the S5 is beautifully
| engineered as well - basically everything is a module (i.e.
| wheel+motor) which is plugged in and secured with a few
| screws - really good repairability and also spares are
| available (needed so far: 1 LIDAR motor, 2,50EUR; 1
| resettable fuse for charging).
| nerdjon wrote:
| I have been eyeing the new Roborock S7, but that has both
| lidar and camera I think.
|
| Interesting that others handle this better. I had heard
| great things about Neato before so that's why I went it.
| But it just ended up being more frustrating and not worth
| it.
|
| Guess I just had a really bad experience.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| I would not complement S5 that much. Mine can never
| return to the dock alone, which is pretty basic - it
| knows where it is, but tries to move there from a weird
| angle, repeats this few times and ultimately loudly
| fails. Also, it always gets stuck on dryer rack.
|
| The engineering on the modularity is neat though, I
| agree.
| swores wrote:
| > _but at least a camera can account for things moving
| around were lidar cannot_
|
| Why do you say that, am I missing something? Surely both
| technologies are able to keep "looking" as the hoover moves
| around, the lidar ones surely aren't doing a single
| analysis and then not checking again?
| nerdjon wrote:
| Others have mentioned that this may just be a problem
| with the Neato software.
|
| The issue I was having with the neato is that is exactly
| what it was doing. It would come off its dock, do a scan
| around it. And if things were too different it would go
| back to its dock and complain that it has been moved.
|
| So I had to find a place that things never moved, but
| that proved difficult. Even small things like the trash
| can shifting or books on a shelf shifting seem to throw
| it off.
|
| I finally got to the point that I basically tricked it
| with blocking it from seeing certain things near its dock
| but that is less than ideal.
|
| Now once it did that initial scan it seemed to be mostly
| ok, but it did seem too often get lost near my computer
| where the chair often moves. It would constantly tell me
| it was lost and I had to pick it up and put it back on
| the dock. Or my favorite was when it seemed to try to
| dock on the other side of my home.
|
| My feeling (and has been confirmed by the iRobot) was
| that at least a camera with decent AI could account for a
| moving object vs most other things being the same. It is
| far from perfect, but compared to the Neato the camera
| has been leagues better.
|
| I am very curious though how other Lidar system handle
| this since I would assume that there is a lack of data
| available to identify a change in environment vs a moved
| object.
| swores wrote:
| That does sound shit, sorry you've had that experience!
|
| But I believe lidar should be able to do the same as a
| camera in terms of real-time updates - from a tech point
| of view it's just a different type of sensor to a camera,
| there's no reason (other than difficulty/cost) why lidar
| robots can't be constantly scanning & understanding the
| difference between a chair that you've moved since 5
| minutes earlier and a cat that keeps moving. Both camera
| and lidar products can be made dumb enough to fail badly,
| or smart enough to do a great job. After all, self
| driving cars have been demo'd using full lidar, it's not
| like that technology itself takes hours to image a room.
| marcinzm wrote:
| My Roborock with Lidar has had no issues.
| nomel wrote:
| What you described is completely unrelated to LiDAR, and
| could just as lazily be implemented with a SLAM based
| vision stack. LiIDAR and vision based systems make 3d
| measurements of what the sensors see, whenever they look at
| it. What's done with those measurements in software isn't
| related to the ability to collect the real-time sensing of
| those distances.
| secondcoming wrote:
| I recently upgraded to a Eufy X8 and it's great. It still gets
| stuck but on rare occasions.
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| I have had super poor experience with iRobot to the point that
| we discarded the vacuume+mop unit we had.
| jmuguy wrote:
| We went from a "dumb" Eufy RoboVac 11 to a Roomba i3+ EVO 3550
| and I honestly wish we stayed with the Eufy or done more
| research. I just assumed Roomba was like the gold standard of
| robot vacuums. Its had so many stupid issues including randomly
| lighting up and making sounds at night which wakes me up since
| its in our bedroom. I haven't talked to their support because
| honestly I'm sure it'll be like all other consumer electronics
| and they'll just waste my time running through BS
| troubleshooting steps and not actually fix anything
| thethethethe wrote:
| You can turn off the lights in the app. This was annoying me
| too. They added it as a feature recently. I think the idea is
| that you know your Roomba is docked correctly and charging if
| the light is flashing
| jmuguy wrote:
| Do you remember where in app? I checked a few times and
| don't see anything.
| thethethethe wrote:
| Go to "Robot Settings", then "Status Lights" about
| halfway down the page
| martincmartin wrote:
| Doesn't iRobot make more from military contracts than consumer
| facing?
| braingenious wrote:
| It looks like they sold their military business in 2016.
| sundvor wrote:
| The Omni is AUD $2500.
|
| It had better be truly amazing, it's 4x the price I paid for my
| old Roomba 780 many a year ago that did a decent job of it
| until it died after 5-6 years of service.
| silisili wrote:
| Do you know how they work on tile? I see everyone recommend for
| wood flooring, but my house is mainly a textured tile. Things
| like a regular vacuum make loud clanks rolling over and between
| them. Wondering if a robovac would even work, or get stuck, or
| just be obnoxiously loud rolling around. Anyone know?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Does the list of obstacles these things avoid include pet
| accidents like poop, cat puke, etc? Cause we have a pukey cat
| and a robo vac might make things much much worse.
| pmontra wrote:
| - Ecovacs obstacle avoidance requires cloud.
|
| - Ecovacs control requires cloud.
|
| No thanks. I'm not giving my home to China, America or
| whatever.
|
| Roborock seems to be better. Anyway it should be blocked by the
| home firewall, just to be safe.
| dubeye wrote:
| Maybe they are buying the brand, more than the tech. I bought
| an amazon basics vac for something like 60 USD which just stole
| the design of the latest cheap vac, so presumably can plunder
| the more advanced models too, once the market is ready for
| them.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Sure, I'll have a Chinese thing with advanced sensors roaming
| around my house when I'm out. Right after I move into my pod
| and start having bugs delivered by Tencent.
|
| Can you say the word "privacy", Mr. Xi? I know you don't
| believe in it over there, but you're not bringing that garbage
| into my place.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| So what if China knows what's in your house? If American
| companies know what's in your house the government can ask
| them for that info at any time and as Amazon has shown
| they'll give it up without a warrant. The Chinese government
| isn't coming to my house and I doubt Chinese companies are
| dealing with the us government like Amazon is.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| ok, so how about we set up a webcam in your bedroom and
| livestream it on the Internet?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| How does that compare to the Chinese government having a
| map of your house at all? Honestly though, if the
| livestream was only viewable in China I'd be fine.
| Certainly much more comfortable with that than it being
| viewable in the us.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| You're either oblivious to sarcasm, or you don't care
| about your privacy. Either way, we're done here.
| mypalmike wrote:
| In all likelihood, literally nobody would watch.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| I don't think you want the word "literally" there.
|
| https://topnews.in/ten-most-boring-videos-youtube-
| revealed-2...
|
| Over 1M views!
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLOPygVcaVE
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Data. Amazon bought data. Mostly.
|
| 10 million customers = data about 10 million homes. Plus some
| revenues, why not.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > a mopping vacuum bot with actual rotating mop scrubbers, AI
| vision obstacle avoidance, LIDAR mapping, and most importantly
| fully automated water fill & mop pad cleaning at the base
| station.
|
| And here I am using a broomstick 5 min every day... I feel like
| we're going to hit the great filter pretty soon
| dawnerd wrote:
| It's crazy tho, even the cheapest roborock w/ LiDAR smokes
| every roomba out there. It's hard to justify the more expensive
| models unless but the advanced feature sets are tempting.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| You are absolutely right, but I'm not sure I want to have a
| free roaming camera and LiDAR sensor from a Chinese company in
| my home. Absolute piss poor track record of data collection,
| I'll happily stick to my roomba. It's definitely semi dumb but
| it's predictable in its quirks. It's also repairable with
| copious supply of original parts. Note also that they still
| innovate, including the self empty bin that actually works,
| which others have now copied. Just sayin'.
| ls15 wrote:
| > You are absolutely right, but I'm not sure I want to have a
| free roaming camera and LiDAR sensor from a Chinese company
| in my home. Absolute piss poor track record of data
| collection
|
| I am not sure if Amazon is more trustworthy than that.
| kyle_martin1 wrote:
| ratww wrote:
| I would say Amazon has plenty of problems, but also plenty
| more incentive to behave and try to be careful with the
| data.
| vasachi wrote:
| Don't they give camera feeds to law enforcement without
| warrant?
| dymk wrote:
| Yes, and they're still more trustworthy than a Chinese
| company
| vasachi wrote:
| Kinda. The problem is your threat model, no? If you think
| of US law enforcement as adversary, using Amazon products
| is a very bad idea.
| nixgeek wrote:
| I mean there are countless documented situations where
| U.S. law enforcement has dramatically overreached or
| misstepped, and personally, I'd prefer people who have
| cameras and microphones in my home to require the U.S.
| judiciary to review some facts and agree to issue a
| warrant for any access. Amazon doesn't meet this test and
| so this acquisition likely means we'll be parting ways
| with iRobot equipment in our home.
|
| I guess you could say my threat model is not "the United
| States is my adversary", and more that I appreciate some
| checks and balances being present on 'local yokel' police
| departments which are empirically not always doing the
| right thing (especially where oversight is low).
| jolux wrote:
| If US law enforcement is your adversary you're already
| fucked. All US companies are subject to subpoena.
| kolanos wrote:
| A subpoena needs to be signed off by a judge. And there
| is an appeals process.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Asking for data, and getting it without warrant, is
| golden.
|
| This is legal for the FBI. An illegal wiretap is not.
| thankful69 wrote:
| How so, logically speaking, setting xenophobia and/or
| racism aside?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Not if you're more worried about the American government
| than the Chinese government.
| Fiahil wrote:
| pi-hole the roborock subdomains. You'll loose starting via
| the app, but the robot stills works.
| thankful69 wrote:
| I guess is better to have a device that will share your data
| with domestic entities that actually spy on you and harm your
| privacy. If someone "has to" own my data, I prefer that
| someone to be in another jurisdiction.
| faangiq wrote:
| conradfr wrote:
| The computer in your house could.
| missedthecue wrote:
| jakear wrote:
| As an individual house, perhaps not. As reasonably capable
| compute behind a residential IP in a net with millions of
| others, perhaps.
|
| Agree that the "data collection" aspect is muzzy, the same
| complaint would hold for any IC you attach to your network
| (hell, even the router itself).
| hoosieree wrote:
| I don't really want continuous surveillance of the interior
| of my home by any company from any nation. There should be
| some places where you get to just exist without being
| monitored.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| So far my solution has been just to make sure everything is
| disconnected from wifi. Not so sure that will actually work
| for that much longer, if it still does at all (cellular,
| more extensive mesh networking, etc.).
|
| I think that places in the US will start having to push for
| the right to turn off and disconnect (yeah, shades of Max
| Headroom here).
| jvanderbot wrote:
| This is exactly my concern. Imagine a DoD contractor with a
| remote-controllable, lidar+camera (+mic?) equipped robot
| based in the USA's main rival country. Does that seem like a
| good idea? Should we put a fleet of Chinese robots in
| SpaceX's facility? Lockheed's? Why not?
|
| It's not just "Murica first". If these were European
| companies, I'd jump ship very quickly to an iRobot competitor
| with a superior product, thanks to EU's data collection laws
| and USA's OK relationship with EU. But they aren't, they
| operate in a regime where questionable data collection is the
| norm and theft of IP is called "R&D".
|
| Yes, Amazon will use iRobot to vacuum more data than dirt,
| but at least they are part of the US and EU laws. They
| provide gov services for a ton of US DoD/NASA infra! China
| could and would just thumb their nose at us without much
| concern.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| >Amazon will use iRobot to vacuum more data than dirt
|
| Well put.
|
| I see the synergy with their Alexa, Echo etc.
| ansible wrote:
| With Alexa, there is a manual hardware switch where you
| can turn off the microphones. With Echo Show, there is a
| manual hardware shutter for the camera.
|
| I'm not sure if that is _the_ answer to privacy concerns,
| but at least it is there.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Had the same thought. Don't know what data iRobot
| collects, but perhaps its telemetry includes square
| footage of your rooms / house? (Amazon can use that to
| determine how wealthy you are). Attach an echo on that
| with microphone and camera, and the iRobot could even
| sneakily follow you and spy on you - Alexa always with
| you in your house, anywhere!
| jkestner wrote:
| I'm less worried about what a Chinese surveillance device
| will do in my house than an Amazon one. Only the latter has
| the ability and history of turning over data to those who
| can arrest me.
| yumraj wrote:
| But the former is acquiring information that may lead to
| them blackmailing you and/or your loved ones into spying
| against your nation, which may lead to more than just an
| arrest.
| jkestner wrote:
| You're comparing a threat that sounds cool and scary and
| is practically non-existent to a mundane abuse of privacy
| that happens every day.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Well, that is a fair point. Each person has their own
| threat model.
|
| I work in tech, often adjacent or on national projects or
| highly sensitive R&D. We have regular counter-espionage
| training.
|
| You are concerned about domestic law enforcement learning
| about you. Both are valid threat models.
| mc32 wrote:
| One concern people should have about foreign tech spying
| on them is the possibility it undermines the stability of
| their jobs.
|
| Let's say it exfiltrates data that eventually allows a
| foreign competitor to build sophisticated metallurgy for
| turbines. It's not like all foreign countries eagerly
| hire foreign talent, moreover it puts domestic expertise
| at risk as well as all the collateral subcontractors and
| suppliers... so, yeah, super metallurgy-guy's job may be
| secure (can get hired by the foreign competitor), even if
| the company collapses but not the jobs of 10,000s who
| work for suppliers, etc.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| As an editorial, I support almost everything EFF and
| related orgs do, precisely to reduce the fear of US
| spying that makes China look like a better option (What a
| state of affairs!)
| Teever wrote:
| China could easily turn that data over to American law
| enforcement if they wanted to see a person they
| considered a threat to them arrested but that person was
| outside of their jurisdiction.
|
| China and Amazon are both threats to privacy.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| Are there known examples of this happening?
| bigcat12345678 wrote:
| It has not happened, does not mean that it could not
| happen. Chinese companies are automatically more
| cooperative than us companies because they are trained to
| cooperate in their home country already.
|
| But so far I suppose the indigenous big tech spying
| apparatus has been effective enough to not need foreign
| operators help.
| toss1 wrote:
| A bit of a nit to clarify:
|
| It seems your actual complaint is that if US Law
| Enforcement decides you are a target of interest, they
| would think to go to Amazon and Amazon's reputation is
| that they'd cooperate in handing over data, whereas the
| LE officers would neither bother to ask, nor expect
| cooperation from the Chinese companies.
|
| The Chinese (or anyone) can certainly turn over their
| data to people who can arrest you, if they decide you are
| a target.
| chrischen wrote:
| Chinese companies operating in the US still have to abide
| by US laws, so they are under the same jurisdiction that
| compels Amazon to turn over data to law enforcement. If
| Chinese companies don't comply, they get kicked out of
| the market.
| toss1 wrote:
| True, I was thinking only of the Chinese main companies,
| not their US subsidiaries. So, yes, there really is no
| advantage there.
| friedman23 wrote:
| The former will just blackmail you.
| buran77 wrote:
| The bar for China successfully leveraging some damaging
| information on a US citizen in the US is pretty high.
| Meaning they have to have something very damning against
| a person in a position of interest. Not impossible but
| narrow.
|
| The bar for leveraging general information about a
| regular US citizen in the US by a company like Amazon or
| the US government is very, very low. One thing I see
| happening really soon (if not already) is such data being
| used by medical insurers to algorithmically decide your
| coverage and rates. Or for authorities to use to
| establish whatever pattern they want that can be damning
| even if circumstantial.
|
| Looking around, all of this already happens in the US
| even without the help of an extra massive data collection
| net. From companies like Google or PayPal algorithmically
| locking you out of your critical digital identity, your
| paid services, your money with simply a boilerplate
| "sorry not sorry, don't let the door hit you on your way
| out", to authorities stealing all your neighbors' smart
| doorbell recordings to see what you have been doing and
| Stingraying the hell out of everyone on the off chance
| that they're going to catch the person they're looking
| for. Anything that makes that easier or opens up more
| avenues to do more of that is definitely going to be used
| (and abused) as such.
| Phlarp wrote:
| There is a WaPo writer salivating over this take.
| jsight wrote:
| > theft of IP is called "R&D".
|
| When it comes to patents, I'm fine with that. Our system of
| patents has become a significant encumbrance to innovation
| and is causing US companies to fall behind.
| beambot wrote:
| Amazon Handed Ring Videos to Cops Without Warrants
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-ring-police-videos-
| securi...
| thankful69 wrote:
| Yup, that was my thinking, even if the Chinese company owns
| the data, they wont be sharing that with the PD or NSA ,
| etc... if they are, then really doesn't matter who owns
| your data.
| Joeri wrote:
| Is there a tangible difference between chinese and american
| companies when it comes to privacy? It seems either will sell
| your data to the highest bidder.
| erie wrote:
| But what is the difference, is the track record of a
| democracy less grim with your privacy? " Amazon admitted its
| Ring security cameras have sent recordings to police without
| the knowledge or consent of the people who own the cameras.
|
| Responding to an inquiry from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.),
| Amazon said in a letter dated July 1 that it has handed over
| private recordings to police 11 times in 2022. The company
| said it was complying with an "emergency request."
| bearjaws wrote:
| Yeah I went from a Roomba 960 (2018) to a Xiaomi Roborock S7
| and in my research it was eye opening to see the level of tech
| difference between the two, even the modern Roomba is using a
| vision only model, and poorly based on reviews. For the same
| price, Roborock has Lidar scanning, AI obstacle avoidance and
| mopping. The thing is, it actually works in the Roborock, it
| can even spot cords and other misc items around my house and
| avoid them entirely.
|
| Additionally since it maps using Lidar it completes a complete
| cleaning of my living room + kitchen area in 22 minutes, whole
| house in under 40 minutes. That is with it covering literally
| every square inch of carpet & tile instead of going around in
| random patterns...
| soco wrote:
| The only annoying Xiaomi moments are when it recognizes a
| sock as dog poo then refuses to do anything in that area (or
| I couldn't figure out how to reset it). Ah, and it constantly
| gets stuck on bar stools pedestals.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| And dryer rack legs...
| Algent wrote:
| I know mine still refuse to pass on an area where it got
| stuck once and I can't find how to reset this area to tell
| it's safe again.
| mysterydip wrote:
| When it comes to poo, I'd rather it be overly cautious than
| miss.
| Bilal_io wrote:
| Then it becomes a smear campaign.
| moepstar wrote:
| Can confirm, source: me, cat owner - had to take apart
| the Xiaomi / Roborock S5 (surprisingly easy), clean it up
| from cat vomit and also clean the living room entirely...
| amelius wrote:
| Why? The thing is supposed to clean dirt. My guess is it
| only cleans superficially anyway.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Have you replied to the correct comment?
|
| The robot sucked up cat sick then smeared it around the
| room.
|
| Cleaning everything seems a reasonable thing to do.
| jamesbfb wrote:
| As a Roomba owner (with a Cat), I agree with this
| sentiment wholeheartedly.
| darkwater wrote:
| I'm picturing this now and it is not a nice picture.
| matthewcford wrote:
| My sister has a horror story with the Roomba and dog
| poo...
| mrep wrote:
| Wow, those both look incredibly slick. I've got a cheap like
| $150 chinese vacuum one and a mopping one but I might have to
| upgrade if they ever die. So do they actually handle floor vs
| carpet sweeping/mopping, don't get stuck on stuff on the
| floor, refill/empty, and you don't have to change the mop
| pads each time?
|
| That is wild as that basically handles all the prep I have to
| do for mine. Albeit, 1000-1500 is quite a bit more.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Yeah it lifts up the mopping part when it senses carpet
| (stops + lifts up) then proceeds so it won't get stuck /
| drag the dirty mop on the carpet.
|
| There is a limit to raised carpets though from my
| understanding, I think anything over .5" (13mm) is too tall
| and it may not go onto it.
|
| The one downside is having to clean the mopping pads since
| I didn't buy the 2x the price auto cleaning station.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| I've had great experiences with the Xiaomi products I've
| bought (34" monitor, earbuds, security cam, air purifier,
| soundbar). They are popular here in Thailand and at a really,
| really great price point
| april_22 wrote:
| While I really dislike the android skin they run on their
| phones, they also do built really nice phones
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Still happy with my Pixel 5 so I haven't gotten the
| chance to try their phones yet
| horsestaple wrote:
| Xiaomi also has working home assistant integration. I have
| mine set up to start vacuuming when everyone leaves the
| apartment.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Do you have any insight on how much of the SLAM data is being
| shared in both the Roomba and Xiaomi robots?
|
| For example can you use them completely offline or do they
| 'need' to phone home to a remote server in order to work?
| moepstar wrote:
| I've a Roborock (Xiaomi) S5 - processing _should_ be done
| entirely local, but with the default firmware expect
| everything to be shared with a cloud.
|
| Enter Valetudo - everything is local, including a
| webinterface to control the bot - installation was pretty
| flawless, upgrades (one so far) as well.
|
| Check their list of supported robots:
| https://valetudo.cloud/pages/general/supported-robots.html
| Inhibit wrote:
| Thanks for the link, that looks like it'll fit the bill
| whenever I scrounge up a vacuum.
|
| Although I think trying to convince vendors they want
| _less_ data seems a little naive. More likely they 'll
| lock out work like this entirely to make sure the free
| floor maps of your house (and schedule, and pet presence,
| and...) keep coming.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > More likely they'll lock out work like this entirely to
| make sure the free floor maps of your house (and
| schedule, and pet presence, and...) keep coming.
|
| If your Roomba is rooted, then can't you disable OTA
| updates to prevent them from doing this?
| april_22 wrote:
| In general, how is it owning a cleaning robot? Do they
| get stuck often? Are there any caveats? Do they clean
| good? How do they handle carpets?
|
| Been thinking of getting one for a while now...
| pbronez wrote:
| I've got a relatively old Roomba. It's pretty great. Yeah
| it gets stuck on stuff when the kids leave things on the
| floor. Yeah the docking isn't super reliable. But... it's
| a level of passive, continuous cleaning that just makes
| everything easier around the house. I will definitely
| replace it when it dies, and spend more money on a better
| one.
| xrikcus wrote:
| We have a Roomba, though I think it's back in its box in
| a cupboard now. In the end it needed so much babysitting
| that I gave up and bought a cordless stick vacuum. That
| is the best home appliance purchase I've ever made. The
| lower hassle of not needing to extend and roll up the
| cord compared with my older vaccuum massively outweighs
| any benefit from the Roomba. Grabbing the stick, quickly
| buzzing it around for a couple of minutes and putting it
| away again is far less hassle than babysitting the
| Roomba.
| Ken_At_EM wrote:
| Cleaning robots are good enough at their job to be a net
| positive to your quality of life.
| lostlogin wrote:
| This. Set them to go when you are out.
|
| Ours scuffs the skirting boards a little, but the house
| is much cleaner. Behind doors, the tops of skirting and
| difficult corners still need doing.
| ratww wrote:
| I love mine.
|
| Doesn't really get stuck (only time was when it "found" a
| fallen t-shirt behind a cabinet).
|
| They do clean well for me, as long as I do it regularly.
| If I don't do it for a week it needs a second pass. But
| how much you need depends on external factors. Literally
| external, like how much dust gets in from outside.
|
| Mine handled carpets well. IME of course. I didn't had
| pets when I had carpets, but at least with wooden floors
| cat hair gets cleaned fine.
|
| Only caveat is if you have levels in your house you have
| to bring it up and down stairs but that's not asking
| much.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I own a Neato D6, and I'm very happy with it.
|
| As others have said, suction isn't as good as a regular
| vacuum. But what makes it great is it can do its thing
| while I'm away. I'm quite lazy and hate vacuuming, so
| there's no way I'd do it manually more than once a week.
| But the bot does its thing daily, so my house is
| generally cleaner. It also has a rotating brush that
| makes the carpet much fluffier than the regular vacuum,
| and seems to be better at pulling out hair.
|
| Navigation-wise it's not too bad. I have to remove wires,
| socks and similar from the floor, or it WILL get tangled.
| The only thing which is a bit stupid is that it doesn't
| seem to know its height, so it can sometimes get stuck
| under things. But I've put some 2 mm wood blocks under
| that shelf, and now everyone's happy.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I got a lower end one on sale and even it has made a
| positive difference for us. We vacuum less often, but the
| floor is noticeably cleaner.
|
| My wife was positive we'd be vacuuming just as much,
| insisted it was just a novelty, but we went from pretty
| much daily to weekly manual with the bot running daily.
|
| Probably obvious but we realized letting it run in the
| evening after dinner while we clean made the most sense.
| You wake up to a clean floor. Prior to that we had it
| running in the middle of the day while we worked.
| Effectively it never seemed quite as clean.
|
| I definitely recommend getting one.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I have a dog that sheds so much that we couldn't keep up
| with it. So its been pretty life changing.
| munk-a wrote:
| We've got cats - and we just invested in like four brooms
| for our small condo - if you see some fur accumulating
| you can sweep it up before it becomes a gigantic rug of
| cat fur.
|
| I'll usually sweep our main hallway twice a day which is
| a nice two minute brain break from work. As someone with
| ADHD working these sorts of chores into a very frequent
| and regular schedule is important or _nothing will ever
| happen_.
| adolph wrote:
| My experience with a couple lower end ones and a sheddy
| dog is that they work well for what they are. Don't
| expect magic. Expect low effort daily maintenance
| cleaning that keeps things spiffy. Maybe the higher end
| ones are significantly better? My bet is that the
| cleaning isn't all that different since among a product
| line they largely use the same chassis--there is only so
| much sweeper/suction/storage they can have.
|
| The one upgrade that would be useful in retrospect is
| electronic fencing, but it isn't a big deal.
| wheels wrote:
| I feel like the major consideration is: do you have kids
| or pets? Then get one. Otherwise, probably not worth it.
|
| If you have small-ish kids, you end up vacuuming everyday
| one way or the other. A Roomba's a decent stand-in for
| that. When my kids aren't at home, I mostly get by with
| my stick vacuum. (There the battery-driven ones really
| are nice.) With the stick vacuum it doesn't tend to leave
| my cables and rugs in random places, which makes the
| daily non-kid-time vacuuming similar levels of effort.
|
| I assume pets are a similar deal, though I'm not a pet
| person.
|
| One thing that hadn't occurred to me before getting the
| Roomba is that it vacuums a lot of places I wouldn't
| regularly get to on my own (e.g. under the sofa), and
| there's some benefit of having a cleaning session
| frequently that gets to a lot of those places that are
| otherwise hard to reach. But again, with kids not at
| home, I run it about once a week.
|
| I'm genuinely curious about the mopping ones since I
| don't mop often, and always like it when I do. ;-)
| rvba wrote:
| Doesnt a Roomba eat lego bricks and other small toys?
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Yes, this is why my Roomba doesn't get much use anymore
| in our house. There's always a loose toy somewhere. We
| have to have the kids pick up all the toys first before
| we can vacuum. At that point we end up using a Miele
| canister vac instead. We can see what we're about to
| vacuum up. It ended up being the better purchase over the
| Roomba.
| idatum wrote:
| Regarding pets: I decided to give a cheaper Eufy RoboVac
| model a try a couple years ago to help keep things under
| control with a dog in the house. The maintenance on it to
| remove entangled dog hair was just too much in the end.
| Sure, manual vacuums have a similar problem but seem
| easier to maintain. The RoboVac had no computer vision
| (local or cloud) to help with obstacles, but that wasn't
| really as much as an issue as mechanical failures.
|
| Also, my dog wanted to _kill_ it.
| swozey wrote:
| I have 2 of them, a 2-3 year old Xiamoi S5 and some way
| newer Shark. The shark is frustrating to watch, it bangs
| into things constantly and doesn't give up. I have to go
| fix the Shark all the time because it drove over or into
| something, for instance I have a very low TV stand with
| open drawers, and it will try and try until it drives
| right in, and then gets stuck. So I have to have a lot
| more boundaries with the Shark than the Xiomi. The S5 is
| pretty impressive with its tech and I'd only buy a xiomi
| at. this point.
|
| With that said, NEITHER are a replacement for a real
| vaccuum. I would only recommend them for wood floors to
| pick up pet hair and things like that. I'm really, realyy
| disappointed with how they work on carpet.
|
| The xiomi is also a lot more powerful than my Shark.
|
| If there's some vaccuum bot that can almost take the
| place of a real vaccuum on carpet please let me know
| because I don't vaccuum enough at all.
|
| Unfortunately I also have halfway carpeted stairs and I
| need to get some sort of vaccuum that isn't miserable to
| use on stairs.. Please dont carpet stairs. I have a
| really nice Shark big vaccuum but its not fun to do
| stairs with it.
| trebbble wrote:
| > If there's some vaccuum bot that can almost take the
| place of a real vaccuum on carpet please let me know
| because I don't vaccuum enough at all.
|
| If that one famous vacuum-repairman AMA on Reddit is to
| be believed, even most home upright vacuums don't produce
| enough suction to properly clean carpet. No way they're
| gonna fit that much power in a little disc-shaped, quiet
| robot.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The Roomba is rather noisy. The key is that it vacuums
| daily. It might not be as good, but the frequency really
| helps.
| trebbble wrote:
| Right, but without enough suction it's just not going to
| get any of the dirt _down in_ the carpet, no matter how
| many times it goes over it. It 'll just get light stuff
| that's right on the surface. Shitty upright vacs (so, the
| vast majority of upright vacs) sometimes try to make up
| for this with really aggressive brushes, but that barely
| helps and is really bad for the carpet--I don't think
| Roombas have enough room or power to even try that
| inferior work-around, let alone to generate a strong
| enough vacuum to _really_ clean carpet.
| munk-a wrote:
| That might be enough if the carpet starts relatively
| clean though - most of the deep down dirt gets pushed
| down through repeated use - stamping around a carpet with
| muddy boots will definitely ruin things quick but if
| you're conscientious about usage you're usually leaving
| surface level dirt that a mini-vacuum can scoop up if
| it's run frequently enough.
|
| Roombas or similar things definitely can't keep a rug
| clean forever, but I think it's fair to say they'll make
| the times you need to get the heavy duty pet vac out less
| frequent.
| pferdone wrote:
| We have a 120qm2 apartment, 2 cats, 1 dog and a child. We
| couldn't live without our Roborock S7. It runs everyday
| and sometimes even more. No big issues, vacuums, mops,
| would buy it again in a heartbeat.
| xeromal wrote:
| I have the S6 and it's so friggen useful even if just for
| the cat hair. The little mop addon is solid too! I just
| spray areas that have some sticky / dried on goop and it
| handles the rest.
| silverlake wrote:
| I have an S7 and it's been ridiculously stupid. My old Roomba
| was less aggravating. The S7 takes 50 minutes to clean
| 800sqft, always gets stuck in a high rug or chair support.
| Frequently gets tangled on cables and toys. I can clean tht
| floor in 10 min with a stick vacuum. Anyone wanna buy an old
| S7? Barely used, frequently kicked.
| gedy wrote:
| Sounds nice, do these Chinese brands depend on the cloud or
| are any local-only?
| anony999 wrote:
| they work locally(local network via app or physical
| buttons) unless you want to use it remotely via internet.
| The annoying thing is that it still forces you to "create
| an account" when you set it up. This was not required 4
| years ago but it's required now.
| [deleted]
| knowhy wrote:
| I own a Xiaomi Vacuum Robot and that is by default very
| much not local only. However there is a project [1][2] to
| hack some of those devices and make them local-only.
|
| With limited functionality they work of cause without app
| and cloud connection.
|
| [1]: https://dontvacuum.me/ [2]: https://valetudo.cloud/
| Fargren wrote:
| Thanks for this, I had a pending action item to look for
| something like this for my robot.
|
| On a spin-off topic from this project: it says on his
| website
|
| > The Apache-2.0 license is a very permissive license and
| a lot of work is being shared for free here, so I trust
| people to not take advantage of that and sell Valetudo;
| especially not as their own work. Please don't disappoint
| me. Thank you.
|
| I really don't understand why people pick licenses that
| specifically allow for things that they don't want to
| happen. It's specially baffling when the author is
| clearly aware of the limitation!
| hypfer wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31684910
| Shaanie wrote:
| The Roomba j7+ cord and object detection is working well for
| me, although it's (probably) more expensive than the Chinese
| offerings. Regardless, it was a huge step up from my precis
| Neato Botvac connected (which was probably 5-6 years old
| though).
| Semaphor wrote:
| What's the repair story? I have one of the earlier vacuum
| Roombas (620, bought 8 years ago, before most advancements
| happened), and I can still find both 1st and 3rd party
| replacement parts and repair almost everything myself.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Does the Omni handle rooms with big area rugs? Our issue is a
| hardwood main floor that has a bunch of rugs.
| jitl wrote:
| It will steer around the rug automatically I think, and you
| can mark the rug locations as no-go zones or no-mop zones.
| The Roborock is better for mixed floor types because it will
| actually _raise_ the mop up to vacuum in no-mop zones. The X1
| needs to have the mop removed manually to do a vacuum-only
| pass.
| drakonka wrote:
| I recently went from a Roomba S9+ to a RoboRock S7 MaxV Ultra
| and it was like night and day. The RoboRock has not gotten
| stuck on a single cat toy, cable, or sock yet. It doesn't bump
| into furniture repeatedly. It is considerably quieter. I feel
| like it is the first time I can actually safely start running a
| robot vacuum while not at home, and not worry that I'll come
| home to a robot tangled in some random object.
| aceazzameen wrote:
| Being that it's more expensive, the RoboRock should
| definitely be better than Roomba.
| tommit wrote:
| How does it avoid cables? I have an earlier Roborock version
| and while I love it and will defend it until the day it dies,
| I've found that cables are the absolute nemesis. Does your
| version have computer vision?
| charles_f wrote:
| > S7 MaxV Ultra
|
| Gosh, we're approaching the marketing singularity
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| The "Pro +" is still missing.
| spotlesstofu wrote:
| What about effectiveness of the vacuuming? That's where Roomba
| is superior afaik, and the feature is pretty essential since
| you buy them to clean floors and carpet, not to delight you
| with the smoothest navigation.
| deelowe wrote:
| Does it still double as a poop spreader or did they finally
| add a sensor for that?
|
| As a former roomba owner, the issue I always had was that it
| was pretty terrible about coverage. The random walk it did
| often left large areas vacuumed as it had no sense of where
| it had and had not vacuumed.
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's very methodical and works in lines at home - unless it
| gets into chair-leg hell under the kitchen table (table and
| 6 chairs, 28).
| jdlshore wrote:
| Your information is many years out of date. The latest
| model maps your house (and has been doing so for a long
| time), uses a camera to identify and avoid obstacles
| including poop, and automatically empties its bin.
| artdigital wrote:
| That's sad to hear. I love iRobot because of their privacy
| stance, even if it means the tech is slightly behind Chinese
| companies.
|
| With Amazon buying them, I have little hope that privacy ethics
| stay the same. Maybe time to move on to some other brand
| hoosieree wrote:
| Or a broom and dustpan, assuming you can find one without Wi-
| Fi.
| aaur0 wrote:
| I am not sure about dirt, but this will help Amazon collect a lot
| of data for sure
| tra3 wrote:
| I had a roomba 10 years ago, before kids. With all the detritus
| that comes with kids, auto-vac was not a good option. Now that
| kids are older and we maintain some semblance of control over
| clutter I want to get one again. Any personal advice on what a
| good unit might be? Amazon or not.
| Falcorian wrote:
| I trust Vacuum Wars for technical reviews of vacuums and vacuum
| robots: https://youtube.com/c/VacuumWars
|
| Looks like their big robot round up is about 9 months old, but
| they have single model reviews as well.
|
| Edit: A little bit on why I like this review channel:
|
| A lot of gadget reviews I read nowadays about household
| products are like "I like this robot it did a good job
| cleaning. Sometimes got stuck but not too bad."
|
| Vacuum wars is like: "I worked 500 g of fine sand into our test
| carpet and ran the robot for 5 minutes. It picked up 362 g of
| sand which is 32% better than the average for this category and
| the best of the current robots that I've tried. Now, on the
| artificial hair test, the rotors tangled after just 50g which
| is a poor result for this category... "
|
| He's set up a testing suite. He runs all of the vacuums through
| it. You can compare the results. It's how reviews should be.
| ulrashida wrote:
| I use both Roomba and Roborock in my house. Unfortunately
| that will be less Roomba going forward as I'm soured on the
| Amazon ecosystem.
|
| I wholeheartedly recommend the Roborock devices. They're
| exactly where they need to be feature-wise and their app is
| workably okay. Very high WAF guarantees they'll always have a
| spot in the house.
| xsgb wrote:
| I already wonder how people does accept alexa, google home, smart
| fridges, smart TV and smartphones overloaded with trackers. Now
| bots full of cameras and obviously connected to internet are
| coming.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Convenience. It's the same reason many people will pick safety
| over freedom. I'm not making a judgement. It's just an
| observation.
| xsgb wrote:
| I see it more like the consumerism culture alimented with
| strong marketing that convince people there's something to
| gain while occluding any downsides: any individual or
| collective loss.
|
| Like the loss of privacy or the pollution caused by a gadget
| industry relying on batteries, plastics, consumed power put
| together, [...].
| chaostheory wrote:
| You wouldn't understand until you've used one on a daily
| basis. The marketing can only do so much if the products
| don't actually deliver. They deliver
| rurp wrote:
| Marketing is a huge part of it as well. There are a lot of
| slick online and physical ads for these products. Heck, most
| of these devices were created by ad companies.
| LightG wrote:
| This feels like a mistake unless Amazon have a trick up their
| sleeves.
|
| My experience with Roombas has been awful.
| nerdjon wrote:
| On the one hand I am excited about this, on the other hand I am
| worried.
|
| With Amazon's issues around Ring I am worried about the privacy
| side of this. So how they handle that will remain to be seen.
|
| But I also see iRobot struggling with the innovation aspect on
| the home side of things.
|
| Especially when it comes to the quality and price point of their
| robots compared to the competition. If amazon takes some of their
| more price conscious approach to iRobot (or more justified the
| cost compared to competition) I think that would be great.
|
| Personally I went with iRobot for my last vacuum after constant
| struggles with lidar robots just being ineffective for home. They
| can't handle things moving around like they do at home. But I
| can't ignore that as a vacuum it is not as good as what I had
| before and cost twice as much.
| xpil wrote:
| This vividly reminds me of "The Washing Machine Tragedy", a story
| in the "Memoirs of a Space Traveller" book by Stanislaw Lem.
| Highly recommended to any fan of house automation.
| heurisko wrote:
| I expect this is to gain patents/technology around making
| autonomous robots, so that Amazon can create a warehouse system
| similar to Ocado, where robots, rather than people, pick
| groceries.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKrcpa8Z_E
| quantumduck wrote:
| And what makes you think Amazon doesn't do that yet? Kiva
| systems did what Ocado does now a DECADE go. Amazon acquired
| kiva systems (infact, Amazon robotics was born out of this
| acquisition) long long ago and I'm sure can do a lot more than
| Ocado does now.
| pull_my_finger wrote:
| I wonder if Amazon actually cares about cleaning robots, or if
| they're after the data roomba collects?
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/28/16055590/roomba-wont-sell...
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| Amazon probably cares most about getting all the robot making
| talent and capability they can for a wide range of robotic
| needs they have/will have.
| bmitc wrote:
| Amazon Robotics has been actively poaching talent from iRobot
| already, but I think it's probably a little of everything:
| talent, data, and the bump they can give to iRobot sales.
| muttled wrote:
| Roomba already makes bots that carry around pallets in a
| warehouse so your point makes sense.
| dr_spicy wrote:
| Apparently iRobot is going to Amazon Devices and not Amazon
| Robotics, but who knows if they'll silently transfer a lot of
| that knowledge/talent after the acquisition
| isodev wrote:
| It's also possible that iRobot owns patents related to
| technology Amazon is planning to use. Besides brush/cleaning-
| related patents, iRobot owns the rights to several techniques
| used to map and zone a space.
| agilob wrote:
| Schema of your property, number of people living there and
| times where no one is at home is definitely useful for amazon.
| bthrn wrote:
| My robot vacuum sits docked away from me, on a separate
| floor, during the day. It runs at night time and I never see
| it. It's connected to its own IOT network. How would it know
| how many people live in my home and when I'm not there?
| rasz wrote:
| Shoes/slippers, number of toothbrushes, coats/jackets,
| beds. Yes, they do have cameras and call home. Opsec is
| hard.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Roomba uses cameras which don't work at night. If you run
| it in the dark it gets stuck. At least the 960.
| rasz wrote:
| And now realize Chinese brands of cleaning robots have build
| in full detailed mapping (lidar/camera/ai), and do call home.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And for burglars.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I assume you're talking about the kind with a badge. Normal
| criminals don't get access to Amazon's info before entering
| a house.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it's only a matter of time
| until Amazon's data is leaked and sold on the black
| market. Correlate house layout, number of residents and
| their schedules, plus income bracket (from another
| source, possibly also from Amazon), and it's a blueprint
| for burglars looking for an easy score in an upper-middle
| class neighborhood.
| ghaff wrote:
| You don't need to go to the black market. You can look up
| the property at the county (or whatever) clerk's office
| or look at satellite imagery and get a pretty good
| approximation.
|
| A ton of things are public information to a greater or
| lesser degree whether you like it or not.
| darkwater wrote:
| Your take reminds me of https://xkcd.com/538/
| julianlam wrote:
| Don't forget to filter out homes that didn't buy an alarm
| system off Amazon
| bthrn wrote:
| People who rob upper-middle class homes are not going to
| do so because they have a house layout in advance.
| They're just going to rob the house. And anybody who goes
| to the lengths of buying Amazon data on the black market
| is not going to be interested in stealing people's
| laptops and jewelry.
| swores wrote:
| I think that's a bit naive, considering how common it is
| to see modern tech and basic/traditional crimes intersect
| - from ATM card cloning, to using Tor+cryptocurrencies
| for buying drugs, car key fob hacking, etc.
|
| Sure the people who currently buy data on the black
| market won't all start robbing houses, and the people
| currently robbing houses won't all start buying illegal
| data to help their burgling.
|
| But as long as the economics make sense (and it likely
| would - once someone has a bunch of useful data that they
| want to sell illegally, they'll lower the price until it
| is worth being bought by people), some burglars
| definitely will start adding more intelligence to their
| planning including using black market data leaks for
| picking houses to target and for how/when to rob them,
| what items to look for, etc.
|
| And potentially you also get other people for whom
| burglary wasn't a feasible option before, but combined
| with this new tool might be. Personally I'm not going to
| become a burglar for ethical reasons, but for the sake of
| a hypothetical let's pretend that I have no ethics
| whatsoever and think that stealing is a fantastic idea as
| long as I can avoid getting caught. I still wouldn't rob
| houses, because it would seem like quite a risky way of
| making money, and with each big risk taken there's a fair
| chance of not even finding anything particularly valuable
| once you've broken into a house.
|
| But if I could buy data leaks that I trusted which told
| me which houses to rob to find the best ROI items (high
| value, easy to carry, and maybe even located thanks to
| the camera of a robot vacuum), and also told me when
| people would be home and would be asleep.... well maybe
| my hypothetical no-ethics self would still find a better
| crime to commit, but it'd be a hell of a lot more
| tempting to become a burglar than without all that data!
|
| Do you really think there haven't already been crimes
| committed that involves basic dumb theft but where the
| targets were chosen based off a leaked list of car
| purchases, or jewellery shop customers, or...? And not
| just in the era of digital data theft, go back a thousand
| years and I'd assume there were some "crimes of
| opportunity" committed not on a whim but thanks to
| planning enabled only by the studying of information they
| shouldn't have been in possession of.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Not to mention the location of valuables, security cameras
| (other than Ring, as they can just turn those off), any
| security dogs or cats. How do you think Jeffrey Beesoz got so
| rich?
| KoftaBob wrote:
| The schema of your property is already publicly available in
| home schematics records, and they already have your address
| to look up.
|
| I think Occam's Razor applies here. iRobot is a profitable
| smart home product maker, their revenue/profit has
| continuously grown, and their IP + talent will allow Amazon
| to expand into other smart home verticals.
| dogleash wrote:
| I think experience has shown us time and time again that
| the following forms are misapplications of Occam's Razor:
|
| - business decision X isn't (in part) motivated by the
| intention to exploit the incidental access to data a
| product class brings
|
| - data class Y seems worthless/redundant, they wouldn't
| make a business out of it
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Scans of people's home layout definitely wouldn't be
| _worthless_ , I just don't think that's the main
| motivator of the acquisition.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The locations of walls and doors, yes. Your furniture and
| other stuff, no. Having a "man on the inside" able to tell
| whether that third bedroom is being used as an office or a
| nursery could be of value to a company deciding whether to
| advertise child care products or office supplies. Hell just
| giving a heads up that a household is in the market for a
| big ticket item like a couch could be quite valuable.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Yes it's possible to lookup the schematics but completely
| impractical at Amazon's scale.
| delecti wrote:
| If home schematics were actually a thing they cared about
| (and I'm skeptical of even that premise), then at
| Amazon's scale, they could make it easy to achieve at
| their scale.
| toss1 wrote:
| It is a totally different proposition to go and often
| manually lookup and harvest building floorplan data from
| town/city archives than to passively collect the same
| data floorplan data generated by devices in their
| ordinary operation.
|
| The former is not scaleable in any reasonable way and
| every operation is an _ADDITIONAL_ cost, whereas the
| latter is generated for the products ' main purpose and
| you merely add some storage for the harvested data.
| Moreover, the generated data will be much more up-to-date
| (plenty of renovations or updates happen without building
| permits, legally or not).
| joshl32532 wrote:
| I would imagine they'd want to combine Amazon Astro (the home
| robot) and Roomba's cleaning tech.
|
| Create an all-in-one Alexa robot.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| I guess data is one part, but I see this as a smart home eco-
| system play, that integrates well into their Alexa thing.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Amazon definitely cares about automated appliances (as
| demonstrated by their warehouse automation)
| michaelt wrote:
| Warehouse automation is a completely different ballgame to
| consumer, though.
|
| If an Amazon warehouse can replace a $20,000/year human with
| a Kiva robot, they're happy to pay $10,000 for it. Consumers,
| on the other hand, would find $500 on the steep side for a
| robot vacuum, considering they'll also need a regular vacuum
| to cover the stairs and so on.
|
| Consumers' price sensitivity is why Roomba spent years with a
| plastic product navigating at random by bumping into things
| and relying more on a brush than a vacuum.
| brianwawok wrote:
| I think your numbers are a bit off. The base Amazon
| warehouse worker is closer to 35-40k all in cost. And the
| $700-$900 roombas sell very well.
| SnaggyJoker wrote:
| At this point a company is going to need to produce a
| "deceased cubicle human detection" robot for the few holdouts
| 40 years from now.
| andrew_ wrote:
| there's a loose correlation of concerns there, but
| "definitely"? More like "likely."
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Amazon definitely cares about automated appliances (as
| demonstrated by their warehouse automation)
|
| This is almost equivalent to saying that Boeing cares about
| paper planes because they make airliners.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| I once attended a Foxconn seminar presented by Jay Lee where
| the topic was "dark warehouses"; certainly wouldn't be
| surprised if Amazon has a _strong_ desire to reach that level
| of machine autonomy in their own warehouses.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Looking at the reviews for spare parts for my model i7, i hope
| amazon gets rid of the crap replacements, but equally lowers
| the extortionate prices on the official, various, eu
| website(s).
| [deleted]
| tokai wrote:
| Ah dang. Will make me think twice about updating my roomba in the
| future. I was already a bit iffy on having one. but with how the
| sensors are and the kind of company iRobot was, I thought I could
| live with it. And I'll definitely never buy an Amazon produced
| robotic vacuum.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, this is very sad news. No more Roombas in my future. At
| least there are a number of reasonable alternatives, though.
| amelius wrote:
| Kind of ironic that those most invested in technology are about
| to turn Amish.
| bronikowski wrote:
| I could have written paragraphs about my reluctance to
| appliance tech but there's a twit that sums it up for me
| perfectly:
|
| https://nitter.it/ppathole/status/1116670170980859905?lang=e.
| ..
| markstos wrote:
| Alexa, where you are stuck now?!
| xpil wrote:
| This vividly reminds me of "The Washing Machine Tragedy", a story
| in the "Memoirs of a Space Traveller" book by Stanislaw Lem.
| Highly recommended to any fan of house automation.
| ShaneMcGowan wrote:
| Can't wait until I'm acquired by Amazon and integrated with Alexa
| osipov wrote:
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| I'm not a fan of Amazon or Chinese companies connecting things to
| the cloud that don't need to be.
|
| What I liked about the Roomba brand is reparability. They
| actually make quite a few wear parts replaceable including
| wheels. However, I decided against for privacy as there was no
| way to block cloud access without losing functionality.
|
| Since then I purchased a Dreamy Z10 Pro and have been very happy
| with a rooted and lobotomized from corporate cloud services using
| valetudo while retaining nearly all functionality and integrating
| with home assistant. https://valetudo.cloud/
|
| With 3D printers nowadays, community should pull together to
| create an open source robot vacuum. There are a few out there but
| they're more like personal projects.
| lettergram wrote:
| Well ... time to get rid of my roomba.
|
| The idea that they'll have ring outside, a camera inside
| monitoring every movement is kinda nuts, and Alexa monitoring all
| audio is insane. We already know Amazon has a service to sell
| data to police. I don't know what people will expect here.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's interesting because I would totally go for that if I could
| run all of the services locally with some digital assistant AI
| to tie it together and manage them. It's tragic, really. The
| cool future I imagined is here but there is a catch. There's
| always a catch.
| barbazoo wrote:
| How long do folks think until this will lead to actual change
| within what's now iRobot? Am I naive to assume nothing really
| will change in the next year or two? I just bought this thing a
| year ago. It's frustrating to think it's now part of the Amazon
| data collection system.
|
| I wonder if there'll be a way to sever the device from the
| cloud and use it through HomeAssistant exclusively. As far as I
| know it is running an MQTT server but I have no idea how much
| it relies on the cloud to function.
| tootie wrote:
| Absolutely every American company that get a legal request for
| data from law enforcement will comply. Small companies don't
| make the news the way Amazon does, but if robot vacuums have
| ever collected evidence of a crime, then I guarantee iRobot has
| been issued and complied with requests for data too. Police
| routinely collect security camera footage from small
| businesses. Nobody is immune to due process.
| danjoredd wrote:
| We elect our true leaders with each of our purchases, and our
| ballot is every receipt we get
| [deleted]
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| Could you elaborate more on "We already know Amazon has a
| service to sell data to police" statement?
| belval wrote:
| It's plain not true, Amazon has shared information with the
| police, but they don't make money from it. It's also not
| large-scale with only 11 requests in 2022.
|
| There are plenty of reasons to dislike Amazon, no need to
| invent one:
|
| > Ring says it will only "respond immediately to urgent law
| enforcement requests for information in cases involving
| imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any
| person." Its policy is to review any requests for assistance
| from police, then make "a good-faith determination whether
| the request meets the well-known standard, grounded in
| federal law, that there is imminent danger of death or
| serious physical injury to any person requiring disclosure of
| information without delay."
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/07/amazon-
| finally-a...
| lettergram wrote:
| Here's a direct request
|
| https://ler.amazon.com/us
|
| Here's an article from Gizmodo
|
| https://gizmodo.com/ring-s-hidden-data-let-us-map-amazons-
| sp...
|
| > Neighbors, which has millions of users, is advertised as
| a way to receive "real-time crime and safety alerts" from
| local law enforcement and other Neighbors users nearby. A
| Ring camera isn't required to use the app. In cities where
| police have partnered with Ring, police officers have
| access to a special law enforcement portal, through which
| the officers can request access to Ring footage. They can
| choose a date, a time, and a location on a map, and
| Neighbors users with cameras in the vicinity are alerted.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Amazon admits giving police Ring camera footage without
| owner consent - https://theintercept.com/2022/07/13/amazon-
| ring-camera-foota...
|
| Google, like Amazon, may let police see your video without
| a warrant -
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/26/23279562/arlo-apple-
| wyze-...
| belval wrote:
| Yes, the link I shared is from the same story. My point
| is that they aren't using it to sell ads.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The original claim in this thread wasn't related to
| adverts, it was that data was sold to the police. Isn't
| the reality worse, they just give it to the police?
| parkingrift wrote:
| >It's also not large-scale with only 11 requests in 2022.
|
| We should definitely take Amazon at their word here. Such a
| trustworthy company should be given the benefit of the
| doubt. We don't need to be able to audit these claims.
| Amazon said it, and therefore it is fact!
| dalbasal wrote:
| Robot scabs for the coming union wars in amazon warehouses.
| Kidding, but maybe that's the actual idea.
| acomjean wrote:
| Amazon bought Kiva systems for 775 million a few years back to
| automate their warehouses with robotics. (the robots are the
| shelves...) I'm not sure how the automation is going, but
| they're definitely looking to automate as much as possible..
|
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/amazon-acquires-kiva-systems-for-7...
| O__________O wrote:
| Anyone have a link to a breakdown of iRobots revenue by product-
| type, business-unit, vertical, etc.?
|
| Ask because I am curious how much of their revenue is consumers,
| industrial, military, etc.
| delecti wrote:
| It's all domestic now, and has been for some time.
|
| > In April 2016, iRobot sold off its Defense & Security unit,
| with a new company being formed called Endeavor Robotics.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot#Military_and_policing_r...
| drannex wrote:
| Which was then acquired by FLIR in 2019 -
| https://www.flir.com/news-center/press-releases/flir-
| systems...
|
| Which was then acquired by/merged with Teledyne in 2021 - htt
| ps://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210514005348/en/Tel...
| nrmitchi wrote:
| I'm just going to put my tin-foil hat on for a second.
|
| Not entirely sure how I would feel about Amazon having control
| over a machine full of sensors that can _physically move around_
| within my home.
| andiareso wrote:
| Please NO! I don't want to have to get rid of my Roombas! I just
| bought a new one.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| Well dammit.
|
| My wife and I do our best to avoid Amazon. It's just infuriating
| when something we already own and love becomes an Amazon product.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| I just bought a roomba and was happy that they weren't owned by
| Google or Amazon. This is unfortunate.
|
| I owned nests before Google bought them and it was sad to both
| see their innovation decline (basically the same now as 8 years
| ago) and usability decline (forcing Google logins).
| chaostheory wrote:
| I'm normally skewering how Google manages their physical
| products, but Tbf Nest declined due to mismanagement by Tony
| Fadel, one of the founders. Google gave Nest tons of money
| which didn't lead to anything major materializing instead of
| delay after delay.
| prepend wrote:
| Fadell left Nest in 2016. Maybe the early stagnation can be
| blamed on him. But Google has had the reigns for 6 years and
| nest has really not done anything substantial.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Time to do what I did to every hardware product I owned which
| Google acquired: Rip it out, delete my account, and try to make
| my money back selling it to someone else.
|
| I actually made a profit on both my Nest and my Fitbit so far!
| Though the Nest was from energy rebates before I resold it, and
| the Fitbit was from it's recall for burn risk... Recall paid
| MSRP, not the price I purchased it for.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I have two Nest-E devices in the home and have not enabled
| Google login. If you can find the older versions of the
| thermostats, you can factory reset them, stick them on a guest
| network without internal access, and never use the Google
| login, just the old Nest login.
|
| Not sure how long that'll stay like that, but it's doable at
| present.
| prepend wrote:
| I haven't enabled Google login either but I get nagware from
| nest and Google asking me to.
|
| I really like my nest and hope I can keep them for a long
| time.
| smk_ wrote:
| Personally I'm looking forward to an Amazon home. Ring, Echo and
| Roomba - I will feel well taken care of and always safe.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| $1.7B is a remarkably low price given the amount of popular
| mindshare iRobot has.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| They're getting eaten alive by competition though. Their first
| mover advantage has largely dissipated.
|
| Amazon might be able to give them exactly the kind of capital
| injection they need to get back in front. Alternatively, they
| might end up just becoming a brand sitting on top of an OEM.
|
| Time will tell!
| jsight wrote:
| That's a good point. They look like a premium-ish brand in a
| space that is rapidly becoming commoditized.
|
| That's exactly where Amazon tends to do well with hardware.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| This is great. I was wanting to get a Roomba, but it's too costly
| in India (the model that has the automatic dust collection
| thingy)
|
| With Amazon buying it, perhaps they will make it available widely
| here.
|
| On an other note, the day is not far off when Amazon not only
| controls the distribution, but slowly gobbles up the production
| as well, leading to a _idiocracy_ esque one corporation to rule
| them all.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| When Vorwerk bought Neato, products went downhill. I hope - and
| assume with Amazons tech understanding - this is not the case
| here (Here Xiaomi has replaced most appliances, e.g. air
| purifiers etc. and will be our next robot too).
| mrkramer wrote:
| Also covered here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/05/amazon-is-
| buying-irobot-fo...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/5/23293349/amazon-acquires-i...
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I wonder if this has anything to do with the CHIPS Act. It seems
| like a good time to look around and see if you can acquire a
| company and somehow capture some (or more) of that funding.
| interestica wrote:
| I mean they aren't just doing vacuums. And I wonder if there's
| some other tech there that Amazon is interested in.
|
| For instance they have the "Root" and "Create" which is meant to
| teach coding and robotics.
|
| https://www.irobot.ca/en_CA/root.html
| seanw444 wrote:
| Now we wait for the cameras and microphones. Gotta hand it to
| Bezos, they're building a solid fleet of home espionage devices.
| The modern trend of replacing everything with smart devices
| reminds me, ironically, of the movie "I, Robot." I wonder how
| long it'll take for a corporation to go rogue and lock the
| country down. Maybe not now, or even in 20 years. But they have a
| lot of power.
|
| Imagine that. A corporate-run national coup, all thanks to
| people's laziness.
| wnevets wrote:
| oh no. How long until Amazon implements the house mapping tech
| iRobot got in trouble for even mentioning? [1]
|
| [1] https://www.sciencealert.com/your-roomba-could-be-
| silently-m...
| connor11528 wrote:
| Amazon will own your healthcare (one medical), your vacuum
| (irobot), the movies you watch (mgm, prime) and where you get
| your groceries (whole foods)
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Is 1X revenue good?
| rexreed wrote:
| Depends which direction that revenue is going. Anyways
| multiples of profit is a better measure if the business is
| making money. After all you could have a multi-billion dollar
| company tomorrow selling gas for $1/gallon. but you'd also be
| losing $3-4 for every $1 you make. A pretty good analogy for
| many tech companies.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| No. It is a sign that profits and profit margins are low and
| not expected to grow much anytime soon.
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-pr...
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/IRBT/irobot/net-in...
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Oh my god, they're going to use them to sonar the interior of all
| of our homes.
| micheljansen wrote:
| "Check out this chest of drawers that would fit perfectly in
| that corner over there!"
| ggregoire wrote:
| How do these cleaning bots handle corners? Do they have a way to
| reach them or they just skip them?
| protomyth wrote:
| I really do hope the technology to identify (chemically) what it
| is sucking up is not available because I can only imagine what
| Amazon could do with that information (well, other that send it
| to police without a warrant like Ring videos).
| hownottowrite wrote:
| Fwiw, they're not buying Roomba for the tech. They're buying it
| for the brand and the customer base.
| [deleted]
| alphabetting wrote:
| FTC just blocked FB from buying a VR app. Will be interesting to
| see if this gets through. Very little roomba to maneuver in this
| regulatory environment. I'll see myself out.
| mrkramer wrote:
| morelisp wrote:
| Why is she wrong?
| mrkramer wrote:
| Because she thinks she can predict the future in a way that
| she believes she knows what is the best for the market in
| the long term.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That sounds like a criticism of economists, not lawyers.
| mrkramer wrote:
| If you are a neoliberal economist that's not bad
| criticism because less government intervention the better
| for the market.
| morelisp wrote:
| To be clear, this is an incredibly non-specific (neither
| her nor the merger in question) criticism, so you are
| proposing that no merger should ever be blocked for any
| reason?
| mrkramer wrote:
| Scrutinize big mergers don't block smaller acquisitions
| because you think you know that sometime in the future
| the smaller company will become big healthy competitor.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's not what they think they know.
|
| They think they know Facebook has the financial resources
| to buy out anyone with even a _slight_ chance of becoming
| a competitor, and are leveraging that in an anti-
| competitive fashion.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >They think they know Facebook has the financial
| resources to buy out anyone with even a slight chance of
| becoming a competitor, and are leveraging that in an
| anti-competitive fashion.
|
| Ofc they know it; Facebook/Meta is a public company with
| a huge cash pile and the pressure from investors to spend
| that cash is only increasing. They already spend billions
| for R&D just like their tech peers and the best way to
| spend the rest of the cash is apparently acquisitions.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That's what VCs do every day by picking winners and
| losers. Companies like Uber would not have made it (and
| still might not make it) without massive cash injections.
| In practice, how is VCs choosing winners different than
| the FTC doing so?
| mrkramer wrote:
| VCs are private companies which invest and manage private
| money and they are not regulating anything. FTC is a
| government entity which is required by law to regulate
| markets. That is my layman understanding. And there are
| hundreds of VCs so if one VC does not believe in your
| mission and vision find another one but there is only one
| FTC.
| nindalf wrote:
| I'm not the other person, but in my view it's impossible to
| evaluate the full impact of an acquisition. What you need
| to do is envision futures where the acquisition does and
| doesn't take place. And then you have to be satisfied that
| in both futures, the market and customers suffer no injury.
| And then you have to justify that decision 10 years later
| to people who have the benefit of hindsight.
|
| It's in vogue to criticise the FTC approval of the
| Instagram merger, for instance. The critics almost take it
| for granted that Instagram was going to grow by 100x over
| the next decade no matter what Facebook did. And that the
| FTC _should have known_ this very obvious fact and blocked
| the merger.
|
| And then this criticism-with-hindsight is used to criticise
| _all_ past and future tech acquisitions.
| pavlov wrote:
| Blocking the Meta Within acquisition is a worrying
| precedent because the app in question has a miniscule user
| base. VR just isn't that popular. I'm guessing they
| probably have 100k paying users, at most.
|
| How can ownership of a product with 100,000 users
| (globally!) in a country of 330 million people become an
| antitrust question? FTC leadership's theory seems to be
| that VR could eventually become a giant market, and if it
| does, Meta might one day have a position that raises
| antitrust concerns.
|
| But all this is clearly many years, even decades away. By
| the same logic, they can block any forward-looking small
| acquisition by any large technology company. And that ought
| to be a problem for the HN crowd because getting acquired
| by big tech is one of the primary exits available to
| interesting startups.
| juve1996 wrote:
| > And that ought to be a problem for the HN crowd because
| getting acquired by big tech is one of the primary exits
| available to interesting startups.
|
| This statement bothers me and pretty much says "our
| product sucks but we're hoping to fool enough FAANGs to
| get bought out."
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| There's a lot of evidence that FB (now Meta) had a
| deliberate strategy of buying up smaller companies that
| could potentially become competitors early, when they had
| a small user base, to keep the market anti-competitive.
|
| This action is completely in line with that.
| morelisp wrote:
| > getting acquired by big tech is one of the primary
| exits available to interesting startups.
|
| Right, but the claim wasn't that it was bad for the
| capitalist class, and neither is protecting their
| personal interests the office's remit. Letting trusts
| happen is always good for _someone_ , that's not a reason
| to allow them.
| pavlov wrote:
| The startup ecosystem is one of USA's greatest economical
| strengths. Pragmatically, it's just completely puzzling
| to me what FTC intends to achieve here. Do they want less
| startups and less speculative R&D investment in America?
|
| Because it seems like a bad idea for FTC to create these
| new arbitrary rules that will chill investment in
| startups, and the only purpose is to punish a corporation
| whose founder has been spending $10 billion annually on
| R&D in VR with no profits in sight. Why not let Zuck
| spend on VR? Most of that money actually flows back into
| the US economy. Meta becoming a boring dividend-paying
| corporation would be enriching the capitalist class far
| worse.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Startups that exit into an acquisition by FAANG generally
| end up abandoning their products and hurting their
| customers. As someone who has been burned by this, I'd
| like to see this exit strategy become less common.
| runako wrote:
| > The startup ecosystem is one of USA's greatest
| economical strengths.
|
| Scaled up, this is only true because some of those
| startups grow up to be big companies that earn profits.
| The counter-argument is that if a large company is
| allowed to buy all of its promising competitors when they
| are small and inexpensive, our overall business ecosystem
| will get weaker in the future due to that big company not
| having to be competitive.
| mrkramer wrote:
| >The counter-argument is that if a large company is
| allowed to buy all of its promising competitors when they
| are small and inexpensive, our overall business ecosystem
| will get weaker in the future due to that big company not
| having to be competitive.
|
| The better question to ask would be why the majority of
| founders decide to sell out to big tech companies instead
| of pursuing the long term vison on their own?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The answer to that question is pretty obvious - most
| people prefer a firm billion dollars now over the
| possibility of 100 billion in two decades, especially if
| they're not independently wealthy already.
|
| The FTC can't do anything about human nature, so they're
| left dealing with the part of the problem they _do_ have
| some leverage over.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > The FTC can't do anything about human nature, so
| they're left dealing with the part of the problem they do
| have some leverage over.
|
| Even the part they supposedly have leverage over is
| debatable. The courts have already thrown out numerous
| claims against Facebook from Lisa Khan's previous
| lawsuits (albeit without prejudice). From this, it should
| be obvious that the FTC's powers of prognostication are
| limited. So much so that the arguments suggesting the FTC
| should be permitted to due process are mind-boggling to
| say the least.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| *permitted to dispense with
| morelisp wrote:
| > The startup ecosystem is one of USA's greatest
| economical strengths.
|
| I don't think there's much real evidence for this,
| especially the "money bubble VC founder to ad tech
| acquihire" pipeline sort.
| rafram wrote:
| That seems like a pretty arbitrary benchmark. (And I feel
| like you haven't met too many econ grads if you think an econ
| degree is an instant ticket to knowing what you're doing.)
| __derek__ wrote:
| > FTC just blocked FB from buying a VR app.
|
| No, the FTC filed a lawsuit to attempt to stop the deal,
| despite the fact that FTC staff recommended against it.[1] The
| suit is a political sideshow.
|
| [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-29/ftc-s-
| kha...
| snarf21 wrote:
| We can only hope. The FTC and SEC have been largely absent in
| the 21st century. We need the CPC to start taking priority over
| stock price and the market.
| crmd wrote:
| The police will soon appreciate access to an interior diagram of
| your house and the number of people inside, along with the
| exterior Ring camera video feeds. For public safety of course.
| erinnh wrote:
| Roomba vSLAM = camera in robots. No idea if they have filters
| (to blur out details) on the Roomba robots or not.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Satellite overhead imagery + actual windows would give the cops
| enough to go on. Oh, and all the plans that are in the town
| hall. And my lawyer has a copy. A stakeout would give the
| number of people inside, as well as cellphone data a la
| stingray.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah, but a roomba can debunk an alibi from last tuesday, and
| (as a bonus for prosecutors) probably isn't great at avoiding
| mistaken identities.
| sethjr5rtfgh wrote:
| macrolime wrote:
| My floors are usually full of pieces of paper,cables and various
| other itens that prevent robot vacuums from working. I have a
| roomba S9, but I never use it because it requires a ton of manual
| work and supervision. Instead I just hire a cleaner a couple
| times a month. Are there any robot vacuums on the market
| currently that can handle a lot of mess on the floor?
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am in the same camp, my roomba is collecting dust (pun
| intended) in a corner. And they are so noisy and take so much
| time.
|
| From furnitures that aren't compatible to kids leaving socks on
| the floor or the gf laptop charging cable or ... these things
| get stuck all the time. I bought back a regular vacuum cleaner
| and mop manually. It is not that big of a deal. Actually the
| floor is the easiest and fastest part when it comes to cleaning
| a house.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Eufy, Roborock, and ecovacs all have models with AI-driven
| obstacle avoidance that seems to work decently. There are a
| good number of youtube reviews that compare them.
| micheljansen wrote:
| Very frustrating that all these smart devices keep getting
| acquired by big data hungry companies. Ring, Nest, Roomba... I
| like these toys because... well, I like toys, but I don't like
| the idea that they can change owner after I buy them.
| DoctorD68 wrote:
| FTC says what? Why doesn't AMZN just buy a ride share company
| already to close the loop on data collection.
| fezfight wrote:
| Well there goes any reason to ever buy one.
|
| Anyone working on FOSS 3D printable robot vacuums?
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