iRobot recently introduced its latest robot vacuum named iRobot 7+ and collaborated with Google to use spatial maps to not only identify your home’s layout but also locate smart home devices .
The Roomba i7+ is able to map out its surroundings and also remember the different rooms and floors which can be named manually through the companion app. The robot vacuum can clean your place while avoiding obstacles and identify which area was cleaned and which area was not, in addition to the function that allows you to ask the i7+ to clean specific rooms through voice assistants like Alexa and Google Assistant.
The latest collaboration is to allow the spatial map to assist in better positioning of smart home devices by providing data such as WiFi coverage or the best angle for surveillance devices, and with the ability to locate smart home devices and understand the surroundings, it will be able to automatically assign names to different rooms in the future based on its understanding of the surroundings.
Google’s director of smart home ecosystem, Michelle Turner did stress that the spatial information will not be used for Google’s ad business and users can choose whether to share their information and be involved with the new experiences that Google and iRobot have to offer. Users’ spatial maps will also be uploaded to company’s server but the low-resolution images will stay in their Roomba devices, so basically it will not be invading or misusing users’ information without permission.