Google wants to improve your smart home with iRobot’s room maps
The two companies are working together to leverage spatial data generated by iRobot’s robovacs
Google and iRobot have announced they’re working together to improve smart home technology using mapping data collected by iRobot’s robot vacuums. The two companies say the aim is to make smart homes “more thoughtful” by leveraging the unique dataset collected by iRobot: maps of customers’ homes.iRobot’s latest Roomba, the i7+, creates maps using a combination of odometry data (measuring how far the robovac’s wheels move) and low-res camera imagery. The resulting maps can be used to create custom cleaning schedules or to let users ask their Roomba to vacuum specific rooms. An integration with Google Assistant lets customers give verbal commands like, “OK Google, tell Roomba to clean the kitchen.”Google and iRobot say this data will be useful for other smart home devices. The maps could be used to locate products like Wi-Fi-connected lighting, for example, automatically assigning names and locations to lights in customers’ bedroom, kitchen, and so on. However, Google doesn’t access any of the 3D or spatial information collected by iRobot.“Much like assigning smart lights or other smart devices to rooms in the home, the Assistant only learns what names people have given to areas of their homes, so that it can then deploy the iRobot i7+ to that area,” said Google in a statement. “We do not receive any information on the layout of the home or where the areas are, respectively.”...MORE
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