iRobot is announcing what itâs calling the biggest software upgrade to its robot vacuum cleaners since the companyâs inception 30 years ago: a new AI-powered platform known as iRobot Genius Home Intelligence. Or, as iRobot CEO Colin Angle describes it: âItâs a lobotomy and replacement of the intelligence systems in all of our robots.â
The new system is part a big shift in how iRobot develops its wares, Angle tells The Verge. As robovacs become commodity goods, available for less than $200 from many vendors, iRobot wants to move up the value chain, differentiating itself from lower-tier rivals with sophisticated software. What that means, says Angle, is a robot you can really control.
âImagine you had a cleaning person come to your home and you couldnât talk to them,â he says. âYou couldnât tell them when to show up and where to clean. Youâd get really frustrated! And itâs the same thing going on with the robots.â
This was what early robot vacuum cleaners were like, says Angle. You pressed a button and they did the job, for better or worse. With AI, though, users can be more specific about what they want. âAutonomy does not equal intelligence,â he says. âWe need collaboration.â
The company has been traveling down this path for a while now, adding capabilities to its robots like a mapping feature in 2018. This allows compatible Roombas to create a map of your home, which users can label with specific rooms and direct the robot to clean on demand. The Home Intelligence upgrade, which includes a redesign of the iRobot app, will enable even more specific spot-cleaning. iRobot claims this is exactly what people want at a time when theyâre stuck indoors and more likely to notice small messes throughout the home.
Not only will compatible Roombas map your home, theyâll now use machine vision and built-in cameras to identify specific pieces of furniture in your house, like couches, tables, and kitchen counters. As the robot logs these objects, itâll make suggestions to the user to add them to its internal map as âclean zonesâ â specific areas of your house you can direct your Roomba to clean, either via the app or a connected digital assistant like Alexa.
âSo right after the kids eat is the perfect time to say âclean under the dining room table,â because thereâs shrapnel everywhere under there, but you donât need to clean the whole kitchen,â iRobotâs chief product officer, Keith Hartsfield, tells The Verge.
In order to create these machine vision algorithms, iRobot collected tens of thousands of images from inside employeesâ homes, to learn what furniture looks like when youâre scooting around the floor. âIf your robot is collecting this data it has a bright green sticker on, so you donât forget and start wandering around with no pants on,â says Angle. He boasts that the companyâs fleet of data collecting vehicles is âprobably second only to Teslaâs.â
This functionality will be supported by a range of new features. In addition to âclean zones,â Roombas will also identify âkeep out zones.â If the robot keeps on getting stuck on a tangle of cables under your TV stand for example, itâll suggest to users to mark this as a keep out zone to avoid in future. As with clean zones, these areas can be customized in the app.
Event-based automation will also be an option. If you want your Roomba to do a quick vacuum when you leave the house, you can connect the app to an August smart lock or a location service like Life360. When you walk out the front door, itâll know to start cleaning. Other new features include customizable pre-set cleaning routines, recommended cleaning schedules based on usersâ usage, and seasonal cleaning schedules, such as more frequent vacuuming when a pet is shedding or during allergy season.
These features wonât be available equally to every Roomba, though. Only those which support mapping features will be able to set up specific zones and suggest new cleaning schedules (that includes the Roomba i7, i7+, s9, and s9+, and the Braava jet m6 robomop). Other features like event-based automation and favorite cleaning routines will be available to all other Wi-Fi connected Roombas.
A key motivation for creating these functions is a metric iRobot calls âmission completion,â referring to the frequency with which a customerâs robot leaves its dock, cleans, and return successfully. Sometimes a âmissionâ is aborted because of a technical failure, but the company says the number one reason itâs interrupted is because a human stops it.
âThat means the robot came out like it was supposed to and annoyed somebody and they killed it,â says Angle. âWe want to keep the robot alive, and for that we needed smarter ways to activate, when itâs less likely to annoy the occupants of the home. That was the mission.â
One challenge for the company when delivering more control and customization is how to avoid spooking customers about privacy and data collection. When Roombas first began mapping homes, there was a brief scare that iRobot might sell this data. The scare was caused by a misquotation, but the coverage illustrated the anxieties surrounding smart gadgets. Roombasâ new object recognition capabilities may trigger similar worries.
Angle is keen to reassure customers that their data is private. Any images captured by iRobotâs vacuums never leave the device and are not even stored for more than a few seconds. Instead, theyâre converted into abstract maps. The company encrypts the robotâs software, making it harder to hack (and turn your Roomba into a mobile spy), but Angle says even if an attacker did break in to a customerâs device theyâd find nothing of interest.
âIf someone stole the data all theyâd know is that you have a room called âkitchenâ and something in it called a âkitchen table,ââ he says. âOur goal is that anyone ever hacks us theyâll be profoundly disappointed.â
For the users themselves, though, Angle promises the best is yet to come. He says this is just the start of iRobot building out its Roombasâ AI features. âIf you think this is cool and you like the direction, itâs just the beginning of the journey,â he says.